The Love I desire is out there for me,

and I feel I’ve been getting glimpses of it in my dreams...

Ganja & Hess, 1973. One of my favorite Black horror films!

I am not the first to write about love, and surely won’t ever be close to being the last. But after seeing some magnificent pieces on substack lately (I’ll link a few at the end), it sparked me to reflect on something that has come up again recently.

Dreams are powerful, random, explicit and confusing. There are times I dream and they have no meaning but to be entertainment during a deep rest. Other times there's a message for me to remember at some point.

I recall coming across

Nadia Meli

provoking piece, In my dream I already know you, and added the note:

I recall a dream I had once of a lover I have yet to meet. The warmth, the safety, the calmness I felt as we shared a cup of coffee in the early morning. I was sitting on the counter, they were across from me and we were content to simply exist with one another without speaking a word but exchanging smiles. I don’t know who they are, but god, I cannot wait to meet them. It was that dream that gave me hope that the love I desire is coming to me.

This was a dream from a couple years earlier. Fast forward to this week, where I had another dream of another individual seeing me as someone to desire. I am a fat, queer, nuero-spicy Black Creole Mexican woman. There are various aspects of my identities and my physical appearance that go against societal standards of beauty. At a young age, I already had convinced myself I was not someone to be loved like I saw in the movies. I was the homie, the comedic relief. When I started dating and having intimate entanglements, I ended up feeling like the girl you f*ck behind closed doors, but not the one you love out loud in public. The Desire I was receiving was not the Desire I wanted, but rather the destructive, patriarchal version of just being used for one’s pleasure. My humanity wouldn’t be acknowledged and my own pleasure wasn’t a priority. A tale as old as time. To some extent, this was my fault of not standing firm in my standards/boundaries. On the flip side, I realized there was no feeling of safety to express what my gut was telling me. As long as I pleased the other party, I was a good lover, right?

But the desire in this dream was one that was enjoyable. It wasn’t just underlined in lust, but the hunger to understand who I was holistically. It’s the one where you want to experience someone outside of yourself. The one where our souls intertwine and exchange countless stories to give context to our complexities as a human being. It was playful and light hearted, but intense because it goes against what I had ingrained in my mind. Thinking back to

Cynthia Francillon

’s extraordinary piece, When Desire Sends you a Text:

I find myself craving not just a lover but the boldness to fully embrace desire when it presents itself. To meet it with the same direct curiosity my friend showed that day. Because there's something powerful in knowing exactly what you want and having the courage to name it - whether that's with a long-term partner or a delightful acquaintance who catches your eye across a coffee shop table.

And thought on the question that came up in the piece: “what does intimacy look like for you?”. While this was in the context of a scenario if Cynthia was bold and explored the proposal presented to her and she went forward seizing the moment, I paused to realize that in the current place I’m at, I can’t answer this right now. As a lover girl, I want to be able to answer this confidently. For whenever the moment comes, I don’t want to psych myself out of the love I do indeed deserve.

Khadijah James, Living Single. As I rewatch the show, it’s so nice to see a bigger woman be chased after. I think about how I’ve been told to settle or lower my standard. I think the fuck not.

The latest dream prompted me to ask a couple of friends, “Do you feel your dreams can introduce you to the person you are destined to meet that will love/pleasure you the way you crave, vice versa?”

These are faceless beings, but it is as if these dreams are preparing my body to know what the love & intimacy I desire feels like. I often read how folks struggle in the beginning when they finally enter a healthy relationship because it’s different from what they’ve known. So I have this wild theory that these dreams come sporadically as I work on myself and my healing for when my person comes: it won’t feel so jarring.

Patiently waiting for you, nameless lover,
Cypress

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Other great writing I’ve read lately:

• Let's Talk Resolutions and the Body by

  Erica Sosa

• An Excerpt From A Dominatrix’s Journal- PART8 by

  Goddess Amy

• The Horny Woman Renaissance by

  Valerie

All of these pieces I found empowerment to take control of my relationship with intimacy.