Alex?

A while back I posted about a woman I had in my dreams, a red-headed girl who accompanied me through a lot of strange things. Zombies, roller-skating, running through dream-malls.

I said I had decided to name her Alex, but upon some reflection, maybe she's Michelle Mellick, the first girl I ever loved, that turned out to be a construct of two girls. She never really existed but my friend just said, "She was real to you."

And it's true, she was real to me. The long hours spent in chatroom Apartment 204, talking and the game sessions from our old Resident Evil Role-Playing Game.

The digital flowers, the digital kisses, the night I listened to Lauren Hill's I Need You Baby on repeat. The hours of phone cards spent with Kim-cum-Michelle.

The night I spent crying when I found out she wasn't real, listening to Viva Forever. It all happened, and even if she wasn't a real person, it meant something to me.

Dammit, she meant something to me.