Ever Fallen in Love with Someone You Shouldn't Have?

No. Nor have I, obviously. Ca va sans dire.

Actually it used to happen distressingly frequently, back in the mists of time; I eventually figured out (when I fell in love properly, and could distinguish the difference) that it was a kind of coping mechanism: faced with situations or problems I was not keen to dwell on my brain seemed to trip a switch and start obsessing about someone, always wonderful and always inaccessible, instead of focusing on the issues at hand and dealing with them. So I learned that my pysche is essentially cowardly, sneaky, and romantic. I mean was. What a ghastly mixture. At 23 I worked out that this facility for love was also a brilliant way of achieving regression hypnosis: I could live as a 13 year old again (I mean 13 year olds of my shy disposition and slightly more restrained generation): not eating, not sleeping, not concentrating on anything except her. Incidentally as a genuine 13 year old when I did this many of my classmates took this her to be Mrs Thatcher, but this was not the case (my dad, on the other hand...). I always chose the most horrendously inappropriate people for the objects of desire, which continued into my twenties, although then it was the same person for a couple of years. But they would be all, for however long it took...for whatever was really bothering me to die down or be properly repressed. Only once did I confess my neurotic-love to its object, and the stakes were not high so it didn't matter: later on the stakes were infinitely high and I derived even more delicious, self-flagellating lovesickness from them.

Now that I come to write this stuff down it makes me think more of the idea of inaccessible women, and their pivotal roles in art and literature (Beatrice?)...but it's probably best not to dwell on that for too long, if at all. It also makes me think more about that awful, slimy creature, myself, but not for too long.

I don't write any of this thinking it's unique or unusual, btw. Just because it came to me in a dream, one of those odd ones that leave you slightly out of kilter for the whole day.

And I had been reading about fairy circles, alternate dimensions and psychoactive drugs that evening.