It was just a dream

I had a dream about you last night.  A dream where you admitted your mistakes and wrapped me up tight in your arms. I was happy.  I knew I shouldn't be, but I accepted it and sighed a long sigh of relief.  It felt good and safe in your embrace, like it always did.  Warm, soft, sweet.  Like I've never felt before or since.  It felt just so right in my dream, and I loved you.

But now I'm awake.  And I fucking hate you.

I want to tell you that.  In no uncertain terms.  You're evil and I wish I could scrub you from my mind.  You used me and thought you could keep me in your back pocket to toy with on occasion, when it suited you.  You warped my mind, made me justify things I knew were wrong, but - Goddamn it, why can't *I* be happy for once?  Every time I would almost come to my senses, you'd blow gently on my face and I'd drift back off, anesthetized to the wrong-ness of it all.

Oh, but you neglected me just a little bit too long and I did wake up.  I woke up and realized I was such a fool for letting you play me like a marionette.  I woke up and could see how frayed the strings were connecting me to all that should really be precious in my life.  Everything was so close to falling apart and I had refused to see that.

I should hate myself for falling for your lies, but I have to live with myself so I pour it all into you.  And her.  Because she did it again to me.  I know why you chose her.  She's more pliable.  Look at what she gave up for you.  Look at how she changed for you.  Look at how she's morphed from one relationship to the next, always becoming exactly what they wanted.  And of course, she's just so beautiful.  I've never been competition, really.  I've never been as tall, as thin, as blonde.  Once she came into the picture, I should have known.

I saw that I was, yet again, the stepping stool to get close to her.  Maybe I shouldn't blame her.  She was manipulated, too.  But I do.  I blame her so much that even in my dreams, when I can't hate you, I do still loathe her.  She betrayed me again.  Knowing my heart, for the second time, she took what I saw as mine.  Because she deserved it.  She was so miserable, why can't I be happy for the two of you?  You didn't mean for it to happen, but you sure flaunted it in my face.  You sure let me be close enough for the utter explosion you caused in your lives to burn me, to leave so much of ME in ashes.  Hurt and terrified of losing the people I held dearest to me, I watched for years, in agony, as you loved each other.  With a secretive wink in my direction here and there.... "I do love you, I really do, but I LOVE her, I can't help it."

But you never really loved me.  And I finally, after so long... so many nights awake wondering why I still held on to it... I let go.  I braced myself for the backlash, because - of course - I was the bad guy for walking away.  I was a bad friend.  Me.  I was the bad friend.  Isn't that funny?

So I stuff the memories away in my mind.  Bury it under all the other embarrassing, juvenile bullshit of my youth.  I don't want to think about it.  I tell myself  the past is the past.  I've even managed to be able to brush you off when you inevitably pop up now and then, to remind me that you're still there, still "loving" me. But my dreams... I still fall for you in my dreams and it makes me hate you that much more.  Under this shell I've built around me, the one that has made it all but impossible to let anyone completely in, under all determination that no one, least of all you, will hurt me again.... underneath everything, in my sleep, I love you.  And I hate you for that.