Dreams

I was always alone as a kid. I never knew my dad (I’m pretty sure I was artificially inseminated), my sisters ran away from home, and my mom worked two jobs and vented her frustrations on me. I never really knew how to have friends, but I always tried to talk to other kids. It never worked.

I saw people who had “best friends” and big brother, and I wanted those things so badly. I’d go home and just imagine what he’d be like: strong, smart, funny, and like all the music and video games that I did.

When I was turning 17, a mere 10 days before my birthday, I met him. He ran away from home and came to my town, and I don’t know why he did those things to this day, but from the minute we met we were laughing together. He knew I was gay, and he even helped me come out. Every time I doubted myself, he would hug me and tell me I was being silly.

This song sums up the way he would make me feel, and the sorts of things he would say to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JURL2gtofpE

Needless to say, over time, I started to fall in love with him. But he had to go back home eventually, and it left me feeling so alone. I had the brother and best friend I always wanted, and he was gone. My dream was given to me just to be taken away.

I didn’t get to grow up with anybody. I’m turning 24 this summer, and all of those years were wasted except for the ones with him. I still talk to him, and he’s lost faith in me. We’ve grown so far apart, and even if we get to be together again it’ll never be like it was. He knows how I feel about him, and he once told me we could have one night together romantically, but he took that back. He said he didn’t mean it, and that he did that with a friend of his instead. On my 19th birthday after drinking a lot of vodka he told me to stop being a crybaby, that we were never going to happen and I need to deal with it. The day after, he hugged me and said how sorry he was, that I didn’t deserve it and that it was the alcohol talking.

That was 5 years ago and I’ve remembered it every night since he said it before I go to bed. It’s gotten to the point where I wake up crying and thrashing wildly and don’t even know why anymore. He doesn’t want to be around me, and he’s said it’s because he doesn’t want to hurt me again.

I just want the nightmares to go away, and to replace them with good memories, but my dream is gone. I don’t get to grow up with him, and I can’t weasel my way into his life either. I know some people grow apart, but he was the only one who ever tried to be my friend, the only one to ever hug me, and the one who believed in me. He doesn’t do any of those anymore, and I feel so empty. He didn’t want to talk to me because it just depresses him. He believed in me, and now he doesn’t.

No matter how hard I try to see him again, it doesn’t happen. He mingles with women that treat him like disposable garbage, and it hurts even more when I hear him cry knowing I would do everything to just make him laugh.

I’m not co-dependent. All I’ve ever had was myself, and I know that I can’t do things for other people, but without my dream, without a best friend, everything I do is hollow. Nothing is rewarding anymore, and I’ve just given up. The only thing that ever mattered is phasing out of my life, and I can’t live with the nightmares anymore. I can’t change it, I just can’t change it!