Sometimes I can't sleep, so I lie still and think and dream.

Sometimes I think of the void in my personal life, where I know there should be a girl, a love. I think about the pain and the loss of past relationships and how lucky I am that it wasn't worse. I think about my dead-end job and how, back in school, everyone told me I had such great potential. Either they lied or they were wrong or, more likely, I've squandered that potential to date. I think about the dinner I cooked that no one ate but me and no one enjoyed at all. I think about the thousand things I needed to do and how I didn't do even half of them.

I feel the sadness building up inside myself and remember what happened last time I laid still and the tears that were dried in my eyelashes the next morning when I awoke. I remember the hundreds of nights, over years and years, when I'd thought over my life and seen how much I could have done and how little I did. When the depression gets too deep, I switch from thinking about the past to dreaming of the future.

I dream about the girl, the perfect girl that I've never met, that I haven't yet dated, that I haven't yet married. I think about the company I haven't yet started and the success I haven't yet found. I dream of holding her close, as I never have, and kissing her with confidence, which I've never done. I dream of fan mail and children and tears of happiness and how, looking back from that beautiful future, I know that all this pain I'm enduring now was worth it. I dream of smiling through the scars and laughing at my foolishness at losing faith and the feeling that I'm master of the world, that I can do anything.

I will have that dream. All this pain has a purpose, and it is to teach me how to be happy. If it takes twenty more years of expanding pain and tear-stained cheeks, I will be happy. Let Satan and Earth conspire against me, let the torture fill my soul, yet will I overcome. You call me an idealist, as though that means I don't know the world's pain and challenges. I'm not idealistic by ignorance, I'm idealistic by choice and my ideals will come true. Mark my words.