Imagine being so spoiled and self-righteous that you believed you could willingly accept attention from him, say nothing to him about not wanting it, encourage it, while whispering lies about him, and then later use your own actions to ruin him. Those are not the actions of a good person, not the actions of a believer. They are the actions of a narcissist. Imagine it. Imagine being so self-righteous that you believe your existence in public is so sacrosanct that only those you silently deem acceptable may interact with you without fear of you insanely attacking them for it. Imagine rejecting love and friendship that you claimed to desire so badly based only upon a head full of lies and distortions from people with ulterior motives and never once questioning it because you enjoyed the pity. Imagine creating the entire problem in your mind, based upon nothing, when you knew who he really was, and then justifying your own deceit with what came after, what your actions led to. And imagine still, to this day, refusing to admit that you did it. But you don’t have to imagine, do you? Because you know you did. And you are still so arrogant, so egotistical, so false that you still believe yourself innocent. 

It was not his fault that you said nothing. It was not his fault that you pretended to accept him. It was not his fault that you flirted with him, that you made innuendos that could not have been misconstrued. It was not his fault that you listened to assholes project their personal little plots and delusions onto him. While what happened later may have been his fault, you courted that as well so you could bask in self-pity … and you still do. It was not his fault that you lied and recast months as what they were not. And you did it consciously, with spite. It was not his fault that you thought yourself so high and mighty that you never would have truly entertained him because he was not a base, greedy, sexist pig. That is all you want. How was he to know that? How was he to know that you only dreamed of repeating your own mistakes? It was not his fault that he loved you and you betrayed that. 

Now imagine if you were not a self-absorbed liar. Imagine that you had followed your heart, the one that led you to let him in, to even want him for a brief time. Imagine that you had accepted and returned the love, the friendship. Imagine not having cared about the judgments of assholes. Imagine having gained loyalty instead of pretense. Imagine being fulfilled in heart and body, satiated with love. No, that is not what you dream of. You have never dreamed of it, and you do not want it. You dream of a sham of a life, a sham of love with houses and cars and abusive cheaters, idiots, self-absorbed monsters. That is how your culture ruined you. But it also ruined your ability to imagine anything else and any semblance of conscience you may have been born with. You owe a debt, and it will never vanish. No amount of self-righteousness, nor being suborned by corrupt souls, will ever justify what you did and what you have let yourself become. He will haunt your dreams forever, because your soul knows you are guilty. 

Imagine turning around and having real love, a sincere life. But you can’t imagine it, and, hence, can never have it. You will not let yourself have it. You can only pretend.