This week, my company is doing a gay pride bake sale, and all proceeds will go to a non profit that supports underprivileged, at-risk LGBT youth. I baked chocolate chip cookies for the bake sale, and this afternoon, I helped man the table in our building lobby to help the cause.

The bake sale is pretty generous: for a $5 donation, you can pretty much take anything you want and as much as you want. We tell this to everyone who comes to the table, and when we told one woman, she was a bit outlandish and said, “Five dollars? That’s a lot of money to ask! I was just going to give a dollar. Forget this!” and left in a huff to the elevator.

A $5 donation, especially when you can take as many baked goods as you please, doesn’t seem like that much to me, especially when you know that 100 percent of the proceeds are going to a good cause. It’s not like we’re charging $5 per cookie.

I met up with my friend tonight over ramen and tsukemen, and we chatted about everything that has happened since the wedding, which is really the last time I spend a good amount of time with her. She showed me this bag that she had bought from a thrift shop and how she customized it to reflect who she was. One patch she sewed on was a cut out of the state of California, with a earthquake marker over San Francisco, which is where she’s from. The second patch was from Air Tahiti Nui, the airline she flew when she went to Tahiti for Tahitian dance with her friend a year and a half ago. She was very proud of her customized bag and declared, “This bag represents me.”

I get how the thrift store bag represents her since she loves used clothing stores and used goods, and she is obsessed with getting good deals. I understand San Francisco, obviously since she was born and raised there and always misses the burritos there. But the Tahiti thing? She’s been there once, and one of her close friends who she traveled with is from there. But how does Tahiti, a place she visited once, represent her? I guess I can make sense of it since there hasn’t been a single time since that trip when she has not mentioned Tahiti or waxed on and on about it, whether it’s the food, the water, the culture, or the languages spoken there. But to say that it represents her seems a little far fetched?

It’s been over two weeks since the wedding has passed, and yet I’m still struggling to wake up in the morning. All my body seems to want to do is stay in bed and sleep, even if it has had its seven hours. Maybe my body didn’t really consider the last week “rest” since it was still up and around with Chris’s parents being here, which means we were out every night and every weekend day doing something. And it hasn’t helped that work has been nonstop since I’ve come back. I need to adjust to being back in reality and not having a wedding to plan or look forward to or be in. Several of my clients and colleagues have told me that I’d have the wedding blues for at least a month or two after the wedding. Geez. Well, I hope I can still get my work outs in at least.

Somehow, I managed to sleep 10 hours last night. I actually woke up in time to head to the hotel gym, but I remembered seeing Ed happy vividly, so I decided to stay in bed to see if he’d come back. Unfortunately, what I thought would be a happy dream ended up being more of the past pain I keep repressing.

In my dream, I was at home again in my bedroom. I heard my dad talking to my mom in the kitchen. He’s having a very negative conversation with my mom during which he’s sharply criticizing someone. The more I listen, the more I realize he’s talking about Ed. “That kid is good for nothing,” my dad says to my mom in his harsh tone. “He’s not smart, he’s not polite, and he’s not anything. He’s just demented.”

As soon as I heard him call my brother demented, I ran out of my room and yelled back. “He’s not demented!” I screamed. “How dare you criticize and put down your own son! What kind of role model are you?”

It’s as though I am not there, though. I feel like I am a ghost because neither of my parents react at all to my yelling and even my presence. To them, I don’t seem to exist.

I went back to my room feeling helpless, unheard, and ignored. Out of nowhere, Ed came out of a corner and made eye contact with me, and I immediately got excited and ran up to him to hug him and hold him. From his eyes, I could tell he heard everything. He looked like he was full of despondency in his heart.

“It’s okay, Ed,” I whispered into his ear as I held him tightly. “Nothing he just said is true. He’s just lying. He’s full of lies and hate. Nothing that he said is true. I believe in you. I love you. Do you know that?”

But Ed doesn’t say anything. He just stands there as we hold each other. I rub his back and I smell that long-sleeved white shirt he’s wearing, a shirt that he oftentimes wore; it was like his default shirt. It smells just like him. It’s as though he’s really there with me, and we are really together.

It was a really terrible start to my morning. I still have these moments like this morning when I keep asking myself if he really is gone, and I get choked up remembering that this is my reality now – a life without him.

Last night, I dreamt that I ran into a former colleague who left my company last year. He was pretty frustrated with the technology situation and his role here, and so he decided to leave and join a very high profile up and coming startup. I really enjoyed talking with him when he was working here, so it was sad when he left.

In my dream, we caught up by beginning with small talk, and he confided in me that he was actually in the middle of a very intense and messy divorce. His wife, who he has twin sons with, apparently had been a not-so-perfect stay-at-home mom by having some mutual friend over… in their bed while he was at work in Manhattan during the weekdays, and he had caught her in bed with the guy on a day he came home early from work. It was a crazy conversation, especially since I hadn’t seen him in so long.

This dream just goes to show what a chaotic and senseless week I had. This made no sense at all.