Where / how do I start?

[sad panda]

Quite frankly I am feeling overwhelmed. Even with all my tools, its all too much. I have severe dissociative amnesia, and even though I attempted to follow the advice of my therapist, and the folks on here, my mind decided it wasn't good enough and dropped a 20-megaton nuke on me in the form of a lucid dream. The dream itself mostly dealt with my vulnerability, my desire to belong, and my desire to connect with the woman that my traumatic amnesia has kept me from remembering for 35 years, at least in any useful or sensible way. In the dream the woman appeared in a distinctive white linen, almost sundress, with billowy upper sleeves, and a repeating pattern of widely separated red hearts or butterflies over the main part of the dress. I mention that specifically because for over the past 13 years I have been having dreams about a woman with this exact dress over and over. In the dream  could never clearly see her face and I could never hear her speak, up until five days ago that is. I took it as me dreaming about another woman I had an intimate relationship with, but no, I was wrong. It had been the woman I had forgotten due to my traumatic amnesia block. I could place everything about her that I could recall in real life, except her face. The scent of her hair, the touch and feel of her skin, the warmth of her next to me. It was the same. It was her. I knew I had spoken to one of my friends about having these dreams (before Sunday night) and I asked him specifically what he recalled about them, and what I had said, just to check and try and keep myself honest. He concurred that the descriptions matched, and felt bad for me, knowing that I have been having these dreams for so long but couldn't figure them out, until now. And now, with more of the block gone as a result, it seems like parts of my psyche and my manner have changed. Like part of me that has been submerged or hidden has snapped back into place, like it was never gone. I feel more confident, more driven, determined, and if possible, more stubborn to see this through. It's also making me more impatient than before, and I'm worried that in my unbridled haste to 'get through this' I will do something wrong. I am not putting on rose-colored glasses. I am putting in the work to find her, and I won't stop until I do, but I have no expectation that she has been biding her time waiting for me to come like a prince to awaken her with a kiss. That's not me, and that's not her- frankly she would kick my butt if I expected something like that. Still, where do I start- how do I start the conversation with someone my mind made me forget? "Hi there, sorry, I forgot you for 35 years, but would you like a coffee?"  I just don't know. I don't know where to begin- how do I build a bridge after all this time? So while I am grateful I had that dream, at the same time I am like, 'gee, thanks!' for compounding that problem. Regardless, I want to be 'here' for myself, and for her, but I am sooooo just.. yeah, overwhelmed. Anyhow, thanks for attending my TED Talk.

[NarcKiddo]

I can see why you are overwhelmed. Please be gentle with yourself. I suppose that if you find her and want to make contact it might be helpful to have an awareness of what the situation was immediately before you forgot her and I don't know if you know anything about that. I guess an approach would be different depending on whether you walked away or she walked away or you ghosted her or whatever.

[sad panda]

She didn't walk away, and neither did I. Her parents were moving from where we in Oklahoma City, to San Jose, California, and she was going to move with them (we were just out of high school). She had an idea of taking over the payments from her parents for the condo/town home they lived in if 'someone' could split the rent with her. I had no stable employment, and I didn't want to commit to something like that and then disappoint her or leave her in a  worse situation. Unfortunately, when I dropped her off at her parents that day was the last time I ever saw her. Much like the other person I have a traumatic amnesia block regarding (and took decades to recover any memory about), losing them completely leveled me, obviously.

P.S. After recovering some of my memories I did recall she attempted to reach out to me four years after moving to San Jose. She called my parent's house and spoke with my mother, who informed me "Josie" had called and left me her information. She said I should call her back as she was extremely sweet and nice, and was really wanting to speak with me. I responded I didn't know any Josie in San Jose, and I don't know if I got the information, threw it away or whatever.