When the Dead Walk Toward You: A Dream, An Ending, A Release

About four months ago, I had a dream about my most recent ex.

I was driving toward home, just a few blocks away, when I saw him walking down the street toward me.

But he didn’t look like the man I once loved.

He looked hollow.

Dead-like.

Zombie-like.

There was no life in his face—just a vacant, haunted presence, as if his spirit had long since left, but his body didn’t know it yet.

When I saw him, I felt it instantly in my chest—panic.

I pressed the gas and drove fast, past him, hoping he wouldn’t see me.

And I didn’t go home.

I turned away, driving in the opposite direction at full speed.

Just days later, I found out he had returned to the city where we first met.

The Soul Knows Before the Mind Does

That dream wasn’t random.

It came just before I knew he was back.

My soul felt him before my mind could catch up.

This wasn’t just about a man returning to a city.

This was about a pattern trying to return to my life.

A version of me I’ve since outgrown.

When I asked him to leave almost a year before, it wasn’t out of anger.

It was out of necessity.

Because I was losing myself.

I was living in suppression. Silencing my needs. Shrinking to fit.

Trying to love someone who didn’t yet know how to love himself.

He had been almost a year sober when we met.

I thought maybe—maybe—he was ready.

But time doesn’t equal readiness.

And sobriety isn’t healing if you’re only avoiding the drink and not the pain beneath it.

He spoke so eloquently, used beautiful words . . .

But his actions never matched.

His tone was often angry, frustrated.

He carried low self-esteem, jealousy, fear.

He was emotionally and spiritually stunted, locked in a kind of teenage rage that no longer had a place in the life I was creating for myself.

Within 48 hours of me asking him to leave, he spiraled.

Alcohol. Hard drugs. Paranoia. Hallucinations. Shame.

Eventually, he ran away to rehab on the other side of the state.

When he apologized for the cruelty he had shown me, I opened my heart—cautiously—offering friendship from afar.

Because I saw him, or at least the soul underneath all the chaos.

I always see the soul underneath.

But soon enough, the drugs found their way back in. And I couldn’t go back to that—to the nastiness, the meanness, the dark and frightening version of him they unleashed.

So I blocked him.

For both of us.

And still, he blamed me. In his own way, calling me cold. Unkind.

But the truth is—walking away was an act of love.

For me.

And for the man I hoped he would become, but couldn’t force him to be.

The Deeper Meaning of the Dream

Emotionally and spiritually, this dream was a message.

A final echo. A visitation. A release.

He showed up as hollow in the dream because he was hollow—emotionally unavailable, disconnected from his essence.

Not because he was evil or bad . . . but because he wasn’t present in his own body, his own growth, his own healing.

The dream mirrored what I had always known but hadn’t put into words:

He wasn’t capable of meeting me where I lived—in truth, in depth, in soul.

And my reaction?

Not just to avoid him, but to drive away at full speed—away from home—

That part is everything.

Because that "home" I turned away from wasn’t just a house.

It was the version of me who might have stopped. Who might have gone back.

The self who once tolerated suppression in the name of love.

But that part of me no longer drives this vehicle.

I am not who I was when I met him.

And that dream showed me that clearly:

I’m no longer frozen. I’m no longer stuck.

I am in motion.

I’m choosing myself.

What This Dream Invited Me to See

This was more than closure.

It was a reclamation.

It told me:

• You don’t have to explain your distance when peace is on the line

• You are not responsible for someone else's unhealed wounds

• You are no longer here to love someone’s potential over their reality

• You are not heartless for protecting your spirit

I loved him with every fiber of my being until I couldn't anymore.

And that’s okay.

I tried.

I honored the soul I thought I saw.

And I left when I realized he wasn’t choosing it for himself.

I didn’t just drive away from a man.

I drove away from a pattern.

A cycle.

A version of myself who kept offering chances to those who weren’t ready to receive them.

Journal Prompt

Is there someone in your life who once held power over your heart, even if they didn’t know what to do with it?

If they returned today—emotionally, energetically, or physically—what would you do?

Would you stop?

Or would you trust your body, your soul, and keep driving?

This is what it means to evolve:

To love deeply.

To leave compassionately.

And to never again betray yourself in the name of staying.

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As a cycle-breaker,

Karen Di Gloria🖤

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