Michael.
My best friend in middle school and much of high school. Inseparable. Even when we hated and hurt each other we were still close. We were teenagers, after all. Definitely my first great love, though even now I couldn’t tell you if it was romantic. It doesn’t matter.
We lost contact in college. He didn’t pop up on social media, which I thought was strange. He was friendly, got on well with everyone, definitely the type who’d have a well-curated Top 8 and 500 Facebook friends wishing him happy birthday.
I search his name sometimes. He’s still alive. He was in a newspaper article a few years ago. There was a picture. He at least seems to be doing well. I have tried to reach out over the last twenty years, but I’ve stopped. It’s okay if he wants to keep me in the past.
But I dream about him a lot. I don’t track those dreams on my habit tracker, that just feels. . .too personal. But I record them in my dream diary. Ten percent of the dreams I’ve recorded (and I don’t write them all down) had Michael in them.
Sometimes we are back in high school. Sometimes we are adults but in our high school bodies. Sometimes we are adults and I perceive us as we probably really physically are.
I told my therapist. I asked her why. I don’t think there’s unfinished business per se; the last time we spoke was a positive interaction. I miss him and I miss being 15 but that’s just normal.
“It’s your masculine side trying to tell you something,” she said. “He represents your masculine self.”
My masculine side!
I am nonbinary, though I usually just say female and use feminine pronouns to make things easier. In some ways, even the term “nonbinary” is too confining. I am not anything, other than I am a Natasha. I’ve never really felt like a girl or a boy. I’ve always been a feminist, but one needn’t be female for that. In my early 30s, I did toy with trans-ness, and I’m being flip and not at the same time. Like, I did think about it. I even had a packer. I legally changed my middle name and deliberately chose a unisex name. But also I don’t think I was ever very serious about it.
It’s a gross talking point to say “oh such-and-such makes you gay,” but I think the nonbinariness comes from the media I consumed growing up. I looked like a girl. My mother desperately wished for a girl who loved pink dresses, which I was not. But I usually identified with male characters because they were more active and interesting. So ultimately, instead of being anything, I was just a Natasha.
When I was falling apart in grad school, I went to the student mental health services. The first therapist I saw was okay, but not great. She wasn’t sure what my deal was, so she had me take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Test. It didn’t identify anything specific, which is kind of weird since I was diagnosed with bipolar the following year. I’ve always been good at taking tests, though.
However, one thing did surprise my therapist.
“You have a really feminine brain.”
“….what?”
“Well, the way you present yourself and everything. I was surprised that your brain came back really feminine.”
Well that explains being bad at moving 3D objects in my head! I wish I could remember what else the therapist told me, and I wish I still had the results.
Anyway, I contain multitudes and I am also just a Natasha.
My dreamself doesn’t particularly look or act a certain way, other than the fact I also often dream about sexual assault (eight dreams recorded so far in 2026, slightly more than one a month). I am clearly female in those dreams. Could those dreams be my feminine side trying to tell me something? Because that’s unbelievably bleak.
I’m always looking for symbols and messages and omens in my dreams because they are so vivid and numerous. There has to be a reason. My brain must have a purpose for subjecting me to this. I mean, when I’m witchy, there’s a reason. But I’m not always witchy.
When did I love Michael, and when did I lose touch with him? Oh, the same time my dad was dying and died and my mom went crazy. It’s C-PTSD. If it means anything, it probably just means I need more therapy.
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