Sometimes I still wake up from dreaming about her. Occasionally, it's triggered by a real-life event--as it was this time--but most often it's not. Asleep, random scenes with her unfold in my uncontrolled unconscious, but when I awake, it's always the same thoughts that flood my mind: her smiling face, her voice as we talked for hours on end, the touch of her hand... and how far removed all this is from my current reality. My heart sinks. I feel it plummet into the deep abyss that separates what was from what is and feel that I am drowning. I struggle for my breath and cry out to God. I pray for contentedness and for that sinking feeling to go away. And it does--never permanently though. While on the surface I'm ok, that longing just gets covered up and never filled. It's a pit used to trap an animal: hidden by leaves, its cover seems innocuous enough but I fall in when unsuspecting. And I become once again trapped in the thought of just how much I miss her.