Ghost of a Thought

i hate you

"So what was it like?" he asks, staring at me over the rim of his coffee cup.
"What was what like?"
    He gives me the most incredulous stare, as if what I asked was the most oblivious thing he has ever heard. My shoulders give a half-shrug, still unsure of what he means.
    "A while ago, you said you fell in love with your best friend. I want to know what it was like."
    I pause, setting down the half-drunken mug of tea. It has been a long time since anyone has mentioned it, I had almost forgotten it had even happened.
    "I had never anticipated falling in love, and I had never anticipated for things to go the way they did. He was my best friend, and I was his; we could confide in each other and feel like we would never be judged. I cared about him... I still do. When everything happened, he told me he originally thought I was a lesbian. I guess that's how I got so close.
    "I started to develop feelings that were more than platonic over the summer. We became very close, talking to each other everyday. He was in a relationship at the time, with another one of my friends. I was able to ignore the buddings, snipping them off before they could flower. How could I let them grow? There was no chance that anything would happen. Then he told me he was planning on breaking up with her, that he was unhappy in the relationship, and my heart began to hope. I felt awful, I felt like some kind of monster, because I was beginning to fall for someone who was dating my friend. It ate away at me, but I would still talk to him, still let my hope grow.
    "It was at the beginning of the school year that he broke up with her. Ironically enough, he was wearing one of my hairbows when it happened. He sat crying in a parking lot afterwards and I drove over to meet him, so I could comfort him. I was trying to be a good friend, but as I held him crying, my feelings grew. Later that week, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life: I told him I had feelings.
    " It took him a while to say anything. My poor heart was panicking the entire time. I was so scared because every other time I had told someone that I had feelings, they would reject me and never talk to me again. I was afraid he was going to do the same. Honestly? He should have. Everything would have been just fine. But no, he told me that he kind of liked me too, and the next thing I knew we were kissing. We kissed a lot, but he never asked me out, never wanted to make anything official of us. I should have known then and there that it was a mistake, but I was so happy and my heart had finally been accepted. I thought I was finally good enough for someone. Everything was great for about a month. One of the best months of my life. My heart was falling deeper and deeper in love with him; he was the best thing that had happened to me.
    "But the illusion faded. I kept hoping that he would ask me out, kept hoping that he would want me more than a friend that he could kiss and touch. He told me that he didn't want to do this anymore, that he didn't see anything happening with us. I'd like to think I was mature about the whole thing. I told him that I was fine with it and that I would continue to be his friend. In reality, my heart was breaking, wondering why it wasn't good enough. Why I wasn't good enough.
    "Things couldn't be simple, though. No. He kept messing with me. He kept playing with my heart, but he would always remind me that I wasn't good enough to date him. He would constantly develop feelings for other girls and gush over how amazing and beautiful they were and how he wished he could get with them. And I just sat there wishing my feelings would die. I think that was when I realized how deep I was. They wouldn't go away. My heart kept aching for a love it would never have. My heart ached for him, but he didn't want me. Yet I still stuck around, I was still his best friend. I sacrificed myself and my happiness so that he could be happy. So that he could fall in love with these other girls.
    "All I ever wanted was to be good enough for him. Eventually, he left for college, and left me behind. He slowly stopped talking to me, and I didn't blame him. I could never blame him. Who would want to talk to some girl from high school that didn't mean all that much?
    "The feelings are still there, and still as strong as they were when I fell in love. Whoever wrote that you were lucky to fall in love with your best friend was a fool. You just spend the entire time hoping that maybe something will happen, but it never does, and you just sit there and watch him fall in love with everyone but you. And your poor heart still yearns for a love it will never have. For the one person who completes you, who makes you feel safe. Who makes you happy. I die inside every day knowing that I wasn't enough, knowing that I will never have him. Noone tells you how badly love hurts.
    "It doesn't matter anymore. To me, love is dead. Love is a figment of a poet's imagination so they will have something to write about. It's what married couples tell themselves when they feel everything go flat. It's what everyone in a relationship tells single people so that they keep hoping. But love is dead, it always was."

{October 9th, 2017}