Phantom

The weirdest dream just... Attacked me. It was a lot to go through, but it also put some things in perspective. 

There's this person I've been feeling a little closer to recently. In a harmless flirtatious kind of way, a sort of "we both know this will never happen so it doesn't matter but also hey what iiiiifff?" sort of running joke. I didn't expect it to register in my brain in the way that would make Those Dreams (TM) start. I haven't had those much since I surgically removed every remaining part of the decaying flesh in my heart that still yearned for intimacy. 

But in the dream this time something very strange happened. She and I were talking seriously about starting something together, experiencing moments of electric tenderness and mutual connection, you know, the true horror movie shit for me. But then I inexplicably explained to her why that is the case. Why connection terrifies me. 

I told her I was in a relationship for a long time and it ended suddenly when she killed herself. 

There was more backstory my brain AI generated, but that was the key point. I know dreams always follow their own logic and it's like a dumb world where things just make sense there that don't here, but at no time did it even register to me, even emotionally, that this was not the case. I *felt* that old grief. And I realise now that's because... That's what it was. 

It was grief. That's what you did to me. That's why it hurt so much. That's why I was hollowed out by it, why it felt like I had been filleted, why I was hanging by the threads life had tied to me as this destroyed, empty thing of only pain and silent begging for someone to hold me and tell me it would be alright, but too alone, and too betrayed to really try. 

In the dream, even just mentioning these memories where you "died" somehow temporarily reopened those wounds. I've buried them. I buried them like a cartel's hitlist. I put those fucking things under 30 feet of cement and steel foundations and built a fucking casino on top of them. I burned the map showing where those remains are even hidden. But dreams are stupid. If they decide you're right back there, you just are. You get teleported right past all the defences and sentries you placed to prevent it, and you're just back in that moment. It's not fair... it's cheating.

There is a certain horror to that distant familiarity. Almost like a haunted nostalgia, like returning to the house you grew up in, but nothing good ever happened there. And it's darker, and nothing feels quite the same shape, but you still recognize the smell. I felt that same icy, alien hand clawing its way into my core, slotting neatly back into place in that old wound that fits like a glove. Welcomed back home by a joyous demon who had missed torturing me so much. 

In the dream, and for me this is the most startling part, there was no emotional distance. I actually broke down crying, thinking back to the day this person who was my world "died". It was all so raw, like it just happened. I've put all of that behind me, but I can't erase the memory. It was so strange to be back in that place after running so far away from it. 

I didn't understand until now what kind of trauma this is. What you really did to me. Why what you did damaged me in ways that will never, ever heal. Why to me a nightmare doesn't look like monsters and violence, but gentle touch that reawakens the mummified remnants of my ability to imagine love. Why the idea of not constantly suppressing that feeling is the thing that wakes me up in cold sweats. 

I've let this go now but at the time one of the worst things you did was the absence of closure. In some ways it was worse than if you actually had died. The existential frustration of always wondering why but knowing you will never get those answers in this life is somehow made worse by knowing they are there, just ignoring you. 

But the knowledge that you probably justified it to yourself with arrogant fantasies of doing something noble, something "for my own good" added a particular flavour of unresolvable outrage that became a spice tainting my every experience of everything else in life since. This became the broken lens through which I view the world. I was always a cynic, but even a cynic knows hope. You lose the ability to be disappointed by anything when all you expect is atrocity.

But now I see it was all grief. That's what really happened, that's the mechanism through which you did what you did to me, and while I could probably have recognized and articulated that any time, I don't know that I really processed the reality of it until now. That's why love is a horror story for me. Why I have to look away in movies when characters kiss. Why I have to violently stamp down any ember of hope for connection in my heart that dares to spark lest it kindle something terrible. 

And there's the familiar sadness that follows. The soft echo of loss, as I remind myself again this thing, this silly flirtation I had with this girl has to end... Because those things are not for me. Thank you, dream, for the needlessly painful reminder. I can't go through that again. I won't. I almost had to become a different species to survive it, and the path that set me on is much too narrow to turn back now.

It's strange to have this clarity, though. Because when I woke up I had to remind myself you didn't really die. That "fact" from my dream remains present, as crystalizing and real as anything else about me. It was still true, and it still is. Because nothing about my memories had to change to accommodate this new detail. 

Suicide is an act of selfishness. It puts your feelings first ahead of all those affected by it. Even when you feel worthless, it is unbelievably cruel and self-centered to just assume you can't hold meaning in other people's lives. And you never get to look back and view the devastation in your wake. It's the most myopically insensitive way anyone could possibly exit a room. And all of this applies just as keenly to what you did. With the added insult that you simply chose not to look back. 

Of course at the time I was also literally grieving, as my dog, who to me was a daughter, also died. So I felt the bitter sting of those real, physiological responses to loss from death at the same time, and it all just sort of morphed into one harrowing roller-coaster chapter in my life. It left a mark on me that never fades. And now what's left of me has to always, always remind itself that it doesn't get to have love. Not ever. Because it's already a miracle any part of me survived that ride. I won't survive the next. 

And that's the truth of what you did, though you'll never admit it to yourself. You took away the part of me that can feel those things, and the scar tissue that remains can only experience pain. The phantom limb sensation of emotional bond. The original force of that pain is a distant memory, but for this brief diversion back in time. But those scars will never leave me. 

A better person would say they forgive you, not for your sake but for theirs. So they can move on. But I moved on just fine with hate as a companion. You don't get forgiveness. Not for what you took from me. Life without connection has no colour. You took the colour away. To me love is not a thing of joy, but one of sorrow, and I now flinch at tenderness as an abused dog does to a sudden move. You did not simply leave me, and don't you dare ever, ever convince yourself you "let me go".

You mutilated me.

And what I am really grieving is myself. The man I could have been. Not just this shadow, this empty ghost watching the world from the outside. I think sometimes that it might have been nice to have lived through life. To have really known love. But alas, only in my nightmares. I am what I am.