I swear I can hear her car driving up.

The sound of her tires on the gravel.

The sound of her footsteps as she walks up the stairs to hug and kiss me.

This very moment, as I lay in bed, I can smell her on the pillow.

To never feel her close to me again. I am haunted…

I wish I didn’t feel this loss.

She finally told me what I always suspected. In her words, I wanted someone to be out and proud with me. She can’t be that.

I’m not sure I have ever read words more hurtful than this. Her support for me was always a lie. We would never be together unless I just crammed myself back into the closet.

My therapist said this to me too but I didn’t want to believe it. I knew her better. This was true love.

This hurts to my core. That wasn’t love after all.

I really thought it was.

I guess I really wouldn’t know what love feels like anyway.

It was my fault for being truthful. I should have never let her into my life. I should have never trusted her…trusted this.

She’ll never know what those words have done to me.

It’s my fault for being vulnerable though.

I’ll never let anyone into my life again.

I made a terrible mistake believing she loved me. Her words tell me otherwise.

Good. I knew she’d never allow me to be “out” in her life and she’d never be “proud” of me again. She strung me along like we would be together forever with her fake acceptance.

I believed it. Like some schoolgirl with her first relationship…

I was only some pathetic rescue to her.

Her need to have someone to save was the only function I served.

Was it too much to be accepted? Was it too much to be proud of me? Like your whole fucking life was going to unravel if you had to have one difficult conversation about me.

Any idea how much that hurts? No. She is clueless. I try to explain and my words are ignored like they were never even spoken.

I say I feel disrespected and I am told I wasn’t. I’m treated like I’m stupid and crazy when I know damn well I’m neither of those things.

It’s a terrible thing to think you have experienced true love and then realize you didn’t.

I told her that she seemed to think I was some completely mentally-deficient loser.

Gaslit by my own girlfriend.

Heartbroken.

Haunted.

I swear I can feel her near me. If only that could be real one more time…just for a second.

So I could convince myself it was really love…maybe.

She called me cruel.

Well she got me back. Her words. I just sucked it up and didn’t lash out. Why do I care about hurting her now?

Her withdrawn fake acceptance, her inability to value me over anyone else. My feelings and identity were secondary to her comfort.

To love someone like I do and realize it was all a mistake.

I know she feels that too.

It just happened again. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest as I swore her car just drove up. She is about to walk in. We will throw our arms around each other and nearly fall asleep in each other’s arms as we kiss softly.

This will never happen again.

The only thing that makes me a loser is how much I wish she would just come walking through that door…how much I love someone who couldn’t accept me.

I heard her words. They drew the dark blood she intended. A mortal wound.

They also just confirmed how I always knew she felt anyway.

Embarrassed.

I can hear my phone buzz with a text message alert. No. I imagined it. She isn’t texting me to say she loves me.

That sound of tires on the gravel is just my neighbor coming home.

The footsteps on my stairwell…just an echo of her beautiful ghost.

…and I lay here so desperately wishing life was different. Wishing I wasn’t me. Wishing I never told her.

Wishing I could feel that love one more time just to convince myself I was truly loved. That I am loveable. That I’m worth it.

Instead this house will be haunted. Her memory a ghost that never leaves.

A terrible reminder of a dream I had.

A dream of beautiful love and togetherness…of being truly known and accepted.

Stupid. It was just a dream. Sand through my fingers and my heart forever broken.

My soul forever haunted by what could have been.