He had haunted her for years. He could pop into her mind at any moment and did. However, she was not and had never been self-aware enough to stop and ask herself why, why her mind would not relinquish thoughts she had told herself she did not want, only to appease others. It was the source of all her bad decisions. It had been the same with her behavior towards him, before the troubles, before they’d told her “no,” she, seemingly oblivious to her own need to acknowledge him, to touch him often, to speak his name, to throw herself upon him. She‘d done it with no one else—even when she’d flirted with another it had never taken on that level of intimacy. She’d never impulsively grabbed their shoulders, never placed her fingers over theirs and held them there as she examined what he showed her., and she’d never sought their eyes like she did his. Yet, somehow, in an act of pure self-repression, she denied it all to herself and to everyone.

Her decisions in life were not and never had been decided by her own heart. They’d been calculations weighed out by the opinions of those who did not have to live it, opinions that denied her what her mind continued to obsess over,. replacing her feelings with “duties” and expectations. She actively forced herself to think of someone else, someone she did not really want, knowing that one would meet with their approval. Following her own mind, doing what she inwardly needed to do to make things right, to remain sane, an unthinkable course of action.

It was sad not only for her, as she wasted years of her life trying to convince herself of lies, to excuse her own cowardice and lack of morality, but just as sad for the one she’d robbed of happiness, stealing away her own happiness in the process. She would not let herself do what was right … ever. So she filled her life with substitutes and rationalizations, cursing him every time his memory invaded her make-believe peace, instead of ever allowing herself the freedom to tell them they were wrong and that she was going to do what she wanted whether or not they approved.

And that was how she died long before her body ceased to function, a shell of a person, role-playing for kudos and punishing the one she’d wanted, the one she could not keep herself from touching, from seeking for attention, only for having wanted her … since they forbade it and she would not hear her own conscience. And, to cope, she denied his existence, even when he lived in her dreams.