No wine, no bears … no sincerity. 

Ah, yes, I was the devil, the madman, the creep. Yet, I was only what you made me, dear, what you needed me to be, and I stood for my transgressions, punished, and remain so. You rejected me for lies and lack of possession, then damaged my ability to attain those things. Did you not know it continues to this day? It has not ended. But you have never answered for your part, scot free, and I know I am not your only sin but you’ve atoned for none of them. What you did to me was not okay, NOT OKAY, unjustifiable, and you know your own crimes, know them well, premeditated. Oh, but everything I did, said, before that trespass was “gay? My desire? My love? No, what was “gay” was your two-facedness and coarseness, learned brutishness you think makes you cool, and your manipulation of others in your need for vindictiveness. What remains “gay” is your definition of a “real man,” for the juvenile-minded brutes that taught you to be that way are not men. You threw me away without thinking, just as they threw you away when they were done with you. You couldn’t even be a friend, though you pretended. So cold. So controlled by others. And you knew it was wrong, but that knowledge and the misplaced, misled concern of those around you only drove you on … into heartlessness. You used me for pity and still do. 

But how did I know things, know things in your mind, know when you were coming?Spying? As you lied about, while that is what you did, misattributing intent with malice? Aspersions you cast upon me to justify yourself? No. I could simply feel these things, sense them, a deepness, a foresight you possess too but reject, shut your heart to. It means nothing to you, that immediate closeness. You shun it, mock it. Shallow meaning is all you allow yourself to see, copying the vain man children you thought would love you forever, thought loved you at all, prepackaged ideas of love sold by the tv, unions based in appearances, convenience. You will call it immaturity, obsession, what have you … but it is truth and you are the one who dismisses it like a child, believes coldness is maturity. How wrong you are. I don’t give a shit how it sounds or how I am judged by those whose opinions are ignorant and hold no meaning for me. 

I thought you were beautiful, smart, kind, sensitive, worthy of love but wronged. I would have loved you, protected you, held you close and kept you warm, emboldened your mind and heart. But you loathed me for their approval. Lied about me, but, in ultimate contradiction, refused to let me walk away. How do you not see your guilt? You hurt my soul for no good reason, and then sought to burn it to cinder when I reacted. I was wrong for my mistaken actions that came later, but what you did came first and was not okay, NOT OKAY, and never will be, though you couldn’t care less, suborned by those who do not know the truth, feeling wanted by the vanity of selfish men, who do not have the capacity to see you as anything but convenient. You carry lies, a debt you do not admit to, and that is on your soul for the short time you have left. It has and will follow you and taint every feeling, every word from your mouth, breathing falsity into your assertions, your insincere claims of love. Ignore it as you have. It makes no difference. It is there. You stained yourself. But you got your way … or did you? Was it your way? 

There is a truth you know and do not admit to yourself, as you admit nothing. You are old now, as much as you pretend not to be. The immature way of speaking and the dye hide nothing, only accentuate the lines, but you do not accept yourself for how you are, so worried about attracting someone who won’t want you for you anyway, trying to obfuscate with 10-year-old photos. For what? I thought you were beautiful without all that. The truth is that after a certain point people don’t fall in love anymore, though they tell themselves they do, rationalize it as such. No, that deep heartache for another is for young people, and it’s not coming back for you ever, not for a lonely, useful stranger from a dating app—a real catch—nor for a face from the past who’s grown desperate, all of a sudden unable to live without you, though he has for years and never thought twice about you until he recognized that his end was coming closer. Ploys. Delusions. Fantasies. Too many things get in the way, too much known, too many variables, unwanted quirks, and a knowledge of how things go bad, focused on the negatives that youth overlooks. 

You, for your ego, let love pass you by … no, you stabbed it. Though mine stood unwanted, it was at least real, long in coming, and proven by my inability to stop it … though I tried. For in my mind I did not want you either. Do you hear me? I did not want to want you! I did not find you convenient nor desirable … at first. But my heart had other plans. I was your last real shot at deep connection, and you were mine, whether you ever see it or not. Sound crazy? Sound like gaslighting? Keep lying to yourself, making excuses. For we did connect, in an unspoken way, and under other circumstances, there would have been no doubt. But lie about it forever. You wavered, and wavered again. You could not hide your eyes. You could not control your body language. But you let them interfere, and your belligerence was not entirely your own. You can never deny the guilt, the recognition of some emotion, that caused you to silently reach out with roses, after more than a year but only a year ago. Label it pity if you must, but, if you truly believed your lies, believed I was what you made me into, you would not have had any. For a split second, your heart rebelled against your conditioning and gave you away, as it had so many times before. And all of your excuses for rejection, for your lies, melted away with that one action. You told on yourself. The truth is in the distance, the silence. You were wounded to the core. You tried to kill me because your heart was ruptured. You cannot bear it and, so, I am the only one who does not get a second chance. I am the only one banished forever, regardless of your own guilt, and that comes from something more than indifference, more than simple spite. You allow real monsters to return, but not me, when you know I am not one. You let the fear of judgment close your heart again, rule you. You are not honest with yourself. You do not act in your own interest, though you think you do, guided by other people’s interests, their wants, their expectations. You rob yourself.

Whatever you think you may have now is merely spectacle for them, in vain, whatever interest or superficial union, and forcing it from spite, to prove me wrong, to garner kudos from others, only makes it that much less honest, more false, using. But you’ve never been honest, not with others, not with yourself, not with me. Too afraid to live for yourself. Whatever offers you have, to whomever you give your time, money-based romance, is given to and comes from those looking for a roommate, a mother, a warm body before death, a maid, something to own, to buy, or to relive a past that can’t be relived. Money does not bestow sincerity. Nostalgia breeds false feelings. At this point in life, the more it feels like a love story, the more false it is, romanticized as an excuse, fantasies imposed upon a reality that does not exist. I held the sincerity, the fire. They will grow cold, as I never would have. And why do you think you deserve a fantasy anyway? Life is not a romance novel nor a self-help book that tells you only what you want to hear. You are not Jane Eyre and this isn’t the 1800s. You look for a stable rhythm, money, not love, not a passion that fires the heart. Passion you flee. You look for applause. You seek only a daddy surrogate, a final roommate, a surname, a ring, not a love, not a best friend, not a fire … a banal existence … a stupid house with a white picket fence and no heart. 

Yes, we were never together. I never thought we were. And that is your loss as much as mine, but even what could have been cannot be replaced with superficial interest. It’ll never be real and there is no amount of fantasy that can change that. It’s just too late for it. The would-be suitors, the stragglers, were not meant for you, for they would have come before if they were, been led there or realized their want long ago. I was always there, with you, before I even knew you, a murmur in the back of my mind, a knowing without knowing. You cavalierly call it insanity, instability, knowing you’re being dishonest again, but it was only fate whispering, and I took it for nothing, dismissed it. I am solid as a rock. But your name, spoken by others, reverberated with me before ever having laid eyes upon you, a vibration from somewhere unnamed, a knowing without knowing. Haven’t you ever just known your phone was going to ring? It’s not crazy. Yes, I have always been here, and I will always be here … though empty now, despising, disillusioned, and judged unfairly because of you, glared at by those who know nothing but your sordid side. They still glare at me, knowing nothing, and I live with that, while you feign innocence. I am judged insane, when you were the one who became unhinged, rejecting me but refusing to let me walk away, defaming me but calling out to me. You should have been removed too. It was required after charges, but you were coddled by imbeciles, who violated their duties. You are not an infant, but they treated you like one … and you let them. I should not have let you go. I should have had you prosecuted. You deserved it, but I never wanted to hurt you. You did want to hurt me, though, and now you owe me. It was my fault, however. I could not make you yearn. I did not possess what you wanted, though you absurdly called me materialistic. That is my failing … I misjudged your values, your goodness. You are spite incarnate, spoiled beyond redemption. You were not a cute bear … but a snake, coiled until striking, and you have kept those who enabled you, though their very enabling means they use you as much as you use them. 

Now you are old and there is no mystery left to unfold. You desire a life of settling for the mundane—pointless routines, going through the motions, a fake knight on a bleached horse. You are deaf to my words, unseeing, unfeeling. It’s what you were taught. So find your new home, your new name, your new owner, your new roommate … all it will ever be. Move away. Pretend a new world means a new you. Keep pretending to be a believer. You aren’t. Sorry, but it’s true. Most people aren’t, as their actions do not match their claims. It’s just another thing you were taught to say, a conditioned behavior. You never atoned, and those who truly believe do not lie to their god nor use him as an excuse. They do not use him to bias the people they’re busily lying to. You did. It’s in black and white forever, as are all the lies you thought I’d never see. But you’re too old to change, too old and scared to defy your prescribed life, too petulant to admit anything. So enjoy your pretentious dinners and shows and travel with someone whom you, in secret, wish were not there. Be dutiful … to nothing real, to a way of life that was forced upon you. Take no risk for truth. Don’t your books tell you to self-actualize? But you don’t. All you actualize is what’s expected of you. You didn’t even allow yourself to finish school and never will. 

And you are now old. So go to your new life without my memory. Leave me in the destruction you wrought because you were told to, and justify yourself as fodder for my stories, as the real monster, knowing you could have, instead, been the inspiration for beauty over despair. You do not think about me anymore, but you still come to me every night, at times during the day, forcing your way in, and I hate it. You will not go away. Are you proud of yourself? The wound, unaddressed, is permanent, but there is no reason it should not be. There is no reason I should get over it. You are wounded too, though you pretend you are not, that it is something else. Since you have no loyalty, no honesty, no remorse, release me. Just go catch one who cares little but speaks a great game and can give you all the meaningless trifles you desire, another crude redneck wannabe with a wallet. Take hold, and do as you are told … for you abandoned yourself long ago, abandoned love long ago. Live inauthentically for everyone else’s eyes, in a false light, as you’re expected to, as your children are corrupted in mind by the piece of trash whom you gave yourself to, having fallen for all of the meaningless garbage you’ve been taught to see as good—the act, the fraudulence, the possessions, the fake piety, the crudeness, the misogyny, the false manhood. That is not cruel to say. It is what is, and you should have stopped it. They will become like him because you cannot relinquish stupid ideas created by men like him for their own advantage, and you owe the world an apology for that. But you owe me more. Read it for yourself. The behaviors of these men, the beliefs, and the penchants are all well-documented as signs of immaturity. You’ve had it backwards your whole life. And you still haven’t learned, the same faces of monied pigs, man babies, surrounding you, as well as many degenerate racists and fake Christians you call friends. If they were not, I would not say they were, and I do not have to know them personally. They give themselves away all on their own. And it wouldn’t matter, if you didn’t listen to them … but you do. You repeat them and soil your own soul more deeply. 

A new year, on a clock that no longer ticks, is here. The same self-denial, deception, and remorselessness is your only reward. Spite is your soul. You were loved, and all the ill that arose from it, meaningless in the grand scheme of life, what you could see past if you chose to, only serves to prove it was real, for turmoil cannot rise from lack of feeling. You were loved, and you chose to smash it. And now you just can’t ever be bothered to care … and you’re not allowed. That is your legacy, for you don’t care enough about even yourself to change it. That is the truth, and I don’t care what anyone has to say about me stating it, what accusations they hurl, what excuses they make for you or you make for yourself. You have never told them the truth. You roleplay for them. But you will never hear this anyway. My words no longer drift to your eyes and ears, and they would never penetrate if they did, everything I say dismissed as “crazy.” But I already paid. Your debt is eternal, acknowledged or not, and you know what you did. 

You are now old, whether you like it or not, no matter how strong the denial. Time has taken your chances for sincerity, and you have cruelly abandoned what you knew was real, leaving you with nothing more than faking it for the time you have left. You’ve spent your life faking it for others. But you’re good at that. It doesn’t matter. They passed an edict, and you obeyed it, made an enemy of me for no reason. So hate me forever, spurn me forever, but what you really hate, or fear, is the truth, and, until you admit that, it will rob you of true happiness no matter what else you do. All I tried to do was love you, but you only “love” what you’re told to and destroy anything real.

But have a good day anyway.