the fantasy of a man like you is how we cope with the reality of who you truly are
how could i have been so foolish to fall for you and to love you so devastatingly?
i guess it was because i thought it’d be different, that somehow i’m special, beguiled by your promises of change and of a fairytale-like love story where it’s us against the world and nothing else matters as long as we’re together.
swept away by your charm, your grandiose proclamation of love, of fate and star-crossed lovers. things you say simply to tug at my heartstrings, because you knew this is what would work on me.
because “love” for men like you is nothing more than a weapon, a means to an end.
you lured me in with manufactured romance, a false portrayal of who you are: customised just to my liking, selling fantastical dreams of what we could be.
and once i eventually fell for you, because of course i would, you switched.
you turned mean, cold and distant, cruel even.
for the past few years, you kept me hooked onto you by always appealing to the romantic and empathetic side of me, making sure that i am still entranced by you, hypnotized by your web of lies and other fantastical charades, so i wouldn’t snap back into reality and be awakened to your deceit.
messages, playlists, letters; all of which with romantic undertones that speak of yearning, of endless late nights staying up thinking about the other:
“in another lifetime”, “i hope we always find our way back to each other”, “heaven / how i remember you”, “interlinked”, “there is only time, i’ll find you again in some other life” — need i say more?
even when we weren’t in each others lives, here you are still indulging in this romantic fantasy, this dream of our union, some fated love story, all of which, i’d admit, i fell so hard for, except of course, it’s all just another manipulation tactic by you to keep me waiting on you.
for when it came down to it, you’d always evade my genuine attempts to connect and instead, leave me feeling used and abandoned.
but few days ago, you wrote me a letter, apologising; telling me that it still feels important for you to let me know that you never meant for things to end up like this, that if you could go back and change how things ended, you would in a heartbeat. that i did nothing to deserve the suffering that you put me through.
that this time round, you’ll give me everything i need for closure or some sense of resolution in all of the wreckage that you’ve caused me to be in.
“i’m ready now, i'm really ready this time. just tell me what you need and i will give it to you”.
it caught me off guard. i had finally accepted the situation for what it is, and just like that, all the hurt and all the feelings came crashing back down on me like a tidal wave.
how much of it is actually sincere and how much of it are simply things you’ve written because it’s what you think i want to hear?
and why is it that even after everything, i let myself believe that this time round it will be different? that maybe, you will be different, that somehow the ending will be different this time?
when the day finally came, i was pleasantly surprised that for once, you actually kept your word and you came through. we called, making it the first time we properly spoke to each other after a long three years of back and forth, of going in and out of each others lives, most of which is your doing.
and i have to admit, my heart soared when i heard your voice again. i guess, for a moment there, my mind and body was transported back to the summer nights of 2022, of which we’d stay up all night talking about everything and anything until the sun came up.
funnily enough, while that was the one thing i craved and missed the most about our connection, that’s the one thing that you detested the most. in the call, you revealed to me just how uncomfortable and unpleasant this is for you to be so emotionally open, vulnerable and intimate.
how ironic huh?
because in actuality, that person, the one that i miss still, the one who’s sincere and open and honest and can talk for hours about his thoughts and my feelings and have deep heart to heart talks, that’s not you.
you presented yourself as this poetic and emotionally in-tune lover boy who’s deep and heartfelt, just like me. but i’ll soon find out later, from your confession, that you were simply playing the role of the romantic lead, rather than actually being one.
you curated a character, a fantasy, and you sold that to me to lure me in, when in reality, that’s not you. it never is and it never will be.
when i asked you why you did what you did, you said you were so “starstrucked” by me and that a lot of it stemmed from you wanting to impress me and get me to like you. that for a moment there, even though you truly believed that that is who you were, the reality is just that it simply isn’t and you couldn’t keep up with all the promises you made.
you then say you’re truly sorry. that you’ve spent all these time thinking about what you’ve done, all the pain you’ve caused me and that this is a culmination of countless sleepless nights, discussions with friends and also self-introspection. all it took was 3 whole years for you to finally come clean and offer me an apology.
honestly, i don’t know if i fully buy into your story.
you revealed too then that the whole thing about being “star-crossed lovers” and “finding each other in another lifetime” is all mostly fantasy, something that you engage with now and then but that it is not real.
and that i should have known it was not genuine.
but the thing is, you were the one who fed me that story. you were the one who crafted that narrative, presenting yourself as this hopeless romantic, which i of course believed because why would i assume that anyone would be lying to me and put on such a grand facade to get with me?
here you are, shifting the blame onto me, and it’s hard for me to believe that you’ve even changed or are genuinely remorseful or if you’re just doing this so you can absolve yourself of the guilt and get away “scot-free”.
it’d be so much easier to navigate this if my heart weren’t fully in it, if i didn’t love you with all my heart and soul. but unfortunately, for me, it’s what comes so naturally for me when i’m in love with someone.
and you, well, you took advantage of it and you weaponized it.
it scares me really, just how convincing you can be, just how easily you lie, and just how quickly one can get sucked back into you.
a call for closure and yet you’re the who indulges still in “the book of our love”, bringing up multiple times about your future plans to visit singapore and berlin, saying that the next time you’re here, you can come show me the summer constellation, then passing it all off as a joke. okay.
you offer half-truths and i let them slide still. i think you think i know less than i really do. i guess in the end, you’re still trying to run, still trying to hide parts of you.
and i can’t help but feel like you’re either trying to make sure that i don’t fully wake up and turn on you, or that you just want me to absolve you of your guilt and sins, to make you feel like you aren’t a bad person. but you are.
if you were actually a good man, no scratch that, a good person, you wouldn’t have treated me like this in the very first place. you wouldn’t have lied to me, you wouldn’t have done things that you knew were going to hurt me, over and over again.
and i know it’s on me, to fall for someone like you, to let myself believe that my love can change you.
but you, you took advantage of it, you stole all of my light and my love, and once you’ve had your fill, you tossed me aside, leaving me alone to bleed out in the cold.
the pattern is clear now and i can’t unsee it. a recurring cycle, and i don’t want it to repeat.
the lesson i must learn is to choose me. to choose myself over your potential, your redemption. to love myself enough to finally come to terms with the fact that if you had truly loved me, you wouldn’t have done me wrong in the first place.
that’s it. as painful as it is, you never once truly love me, despite what you say, because your actions have all proven otherwise.
i think in some ways, you were holding onto this fantasy, and it’s hard for you to fully let it go and let it dissolve because you wanted to believe that it was true too, that you could be that person, and it’s reassuring for you that i truly believed in you and your goodness.
that you could actually be this person that you so badly wanted to be — the sincere poetic and romantic person who’s soft, kind, loving and heartfelt.
but just like bronte and joe, it’s about time i woke up to the truth about you.
the book of us, the story of us, it is not about love, but rather, a story of when love is weaponised and when all the women in his life are used as nothing more than a means to an end and never truly seen or appreciated or properly treated.
even now, you still call it all a “fantasy”, which rubs me the wrong way. because it was real for me and i was showing up authentically, and hence, i wasn’t enaging in a fantasy, i was truly genuinely trying to connect with you and get to know you.
this is my real life, this is me, this is not a “fantasy” for me. after all, you already know, i’m the kind of romantic who’d fly hours to see someone, who’d write poetry about yearning, who’d always wear my heart on my sleeve, chase after my hearts desires and to always show up authentically no matter what.
but of course, to you, i was nothing more than just a fantasy for you to indulge in, your manic pixie dream girl.
because, just like joe from you, your concept of love and romance is tainted.
in case you still don’t see it, it’s misogynistic — for you don’t view women the same way you view your bros, you see us as just an accessory, a conquest, an object without any feelings or independent thought and wants and needs.
you openly talk to your bros and share your honest feelings and thoughts with them but you lie and scheme and manipulate when it comes to women. everyone that you’ve hurt, they were all your romantic partners, most of whom are women.
you see what i mean?
just like joe, when the women don’t fulfill your fantasy, you abandon them and disappear, leaving them in the wreckage you’ve made to run off to yet another brand new city, attachinf yourself onto new unsuspecting lovers (victims), to once again lovebomb and romanticise them, keeping them hidden in the dark of your previous misdeeds.
and if it were to ever resurface, you’d just lie and say all your exes were crazy or that you’re simply a lost soul who is misunderstood.
because love, your kind of love, it is not true love.
instead of genuine affection, it is filled with manipulation, of ingenuine proclamations, of false pretences, of saying and doing whatever to get what they want, it’s the weaponising of “love”, of romance, grand gestures, sweet nothings and lying compulsively to get people on your team.
we are nothing more than just another object, a prize to be won, a new obsession to devour and then discard like we’re nothing when its over.
and the worst part of it all, one that i feel most ashamed about and am still trying to work through, is the fact that a part of me, however slight it may be, really would have loved you forever if you had just been that person whom you portrayed yourself to be.
that somehow, against all odds, i did love you and i did believe in your salvation.
because even now, i’m still trying to humanize you and understand you — still going back and forth between “he’s just deeply flawed and insecure” and “he knows what he’s doing and he’s deliberately doing this to cause harm to all of us”.
still trying to grapple with it all, still finding myself getting sucked back into your void and your redemption, searching still for a beam of light that you swear exists in you. one that lies deep deep down, hidden from everyone’s view.
finding it so hard still to fully come to terms with the fact that you are as diabolical and manipulative as everyone had warned me.
what is it about you that i just can’t seem to fully hate?
i do wonder if perhaps i acted like a mirror of sorts to you, forcing you to fully look at yourself, confront your past, your present, your future, as well as your “true self” vs the unrealistic view that you hold of yourself, fuelled by your own fantasy of who you wish you were instead.
it’s kind of like how you say you are introspective, and perhaps you really believe that you are, but after the call, it’s pretty apparent that it’s not even a quarter as evolved or deep or self-reflective and self-actualized as the casual conversations that me and my friends would indulge in on a daily basis.
it comes to us like second nature, we’re in tuned with our emotions, we work on ourselves, we learn and we grow together.
i can’t say the same about you.
you went on and on about how you don’t want to feel these “negative emotions”, that you don’t want any “negative feelings” attached to all of the things related to me and our time together.
but the thing is, the negative emotions, the sadness, the grief, the hurt, the pain, it exists because it was real for me and you knew it. you know how much you’ve hurt me.
and because of that, i want and i need you to feel that ache, the very same ache that i had to carry with me, thanks to you.
and i want you to live with it, remember it, and never stop thinking about me and what you did for as long as you live.
consider it as your last act of love and redemption, for you to take over and feel all of the ache for all of the ways you did me wrong and let me down.
that’s your burden to bear now, not mine.
lastly, i’ll leave you with this: i’m sorry for ever loving you. for seeing the good in you, however slight it may be. for trying to understand you, for trying to connect with you, for always being so sincere and honest with you.
i’m sorry i wasted so much time on you, for believing in our “love”, for ever being foolish and delusional enough to believe in the fantasy you sold me. to ever think that somehow that you’re gonna come through and make up for all the promises you’ve broken, all of the hurt you caused me, all of the pain, all of the irreparable harm.
i’m sorry for my younger self who loved you so much more than she loved herself, who gave so much of herself away to you, only for you to take it all away from her and destroy her self-image, her ability to fully trust and love others fully again.
because of you, i’ve lost a part of me, a naivety and a lightheartedness that i don’t know if i’ll ever be able to get back.
and so, i hope the stars will always seem hauntingly lonely whenever you look at it.
i hope you’ll spend the rest of your life always looking up at the sky, endlessly wondering (and wandering).
and i hope everytime you catch a glimpse of the moon, you’ll always think of the girl who loved you so devotedly and whom you ruined so devastatingly.
well, i guess this is a long time coming. i’m just glad that the chapter is finally closed.
Is it over? All the bets
All the whispers, the no-contact
You tell your friends that we're still friends
You like me more when we're more than friends
You say New York's close to where you live
You heard I'm playing in the East Village
You gotta ruin everything I love
A show that's ruined when you don't show up
But I'm tired, I know it's bad but
What if this is all I'm gonna get?
I know I'm stupid, 'cause all it takes
Is a conversation to suppress the ache
I'll wait for you to call me back
You make me wait to get me back
You say this song is a must-listen
I told you when we met I love Briston
You gotta ruin everything I love
A song that's ruined when you say "that's us"
But I'm tired, I know it's bad but
What if this is all I'm gonna get?
You say you love me, you're such a liar
You say I'm cool but I'm on fucking fire
'Cause you don't know me, you don't know me
You don't know me, you don't know me
You don't know me, you don't know me
You don't know me, you don't know me
You don't know me
Oh, you don't know me
It always starts so evergreen
Fresh cut roses in the vase for me, for me, for me
Until one day the part turns into three
And now the flowers are turning brown
And we′re screaming "water me"
You told me in the parking lot
It's over and now my heart is an empty shopping mall
And you′ll find someone younger
And I'll lose my appetite
Picking petals from the floor
In the diner next to our old house
I heard it's closing down
Nothing stays the same
You picked me then changed your mind again
So I′ll be picking flowers
Yeah, I′ll bе picking my own flowers
I'm born again in my daisy sheets
I spend my days with episodes of the recently deceased
Yeah, my chest feels tight but my dress fits better
I love England but I hate the weather
If you just stayed there this never would have happened (never would have happened)
Nothing stays the same
You picked me then changed your mind again
So I′ll be picking flowers (I'll be picking my own flowers)
Yeah, I′ll be picking my own flowers (I'll be picking my own flowers)
And we′d live here and we'd die here
And we'd live here and we′d die here
And we′d live here and we'd die here
And we′d live here somehow
I hate to give the satisfaction asking how you're doing now
How's the castle built off people you pretend to care about?
Just what you wanted
Look at you, cool guy, you got it
I see the parties and the diamonds sometimes when I close my eyes
Six months of torture you sold as some forbidden paradise
I loved you truly
You gotta laugh at the stupidity
'Cause I've made some real big mistakes
But you make the worst one look fine
I should've known it was strange
You only come out at night
I used to think I was smart
But you made me look so naive
The way you sold me for parts
As you sunk your teeth into me, oh
Bloodsucker, fame-fucker
Bleedin' me dry like a goddamn vampire
And every girl I ever talked to told me you were bad, bad news
You called them crazy, god, I hate the way I called them crazy too
You're so convincing
How do you lie without flinching?
(How do you lie? How do you lie? How do you lie?)
Ooh, what a mesmerizing, paralyzing, fucked-up little thrill
Can't figure out just how you do it, and god knows I never will
Went for me, and not her
'Cause girls your age know better
I've made some real big mistakes
But you make the worst one look fine
You painted your nails, just to look like a rockstar
You sing in a band and your voice is like nails on a chalkboard
But you're something to die for
You call all the shots, and then you get me to buy them
Those video games that you play are extremely violent
But you know I don't mind it
I'll be up all night, oh
I'll be up all night
Night
I'm a little bit tired, boy
Get a little bit higher, boy
'Cause you don't give a shit
And it works so perfect for you
I wish I was more like you
I wish I was more like you
We're always at your place
Even though it's a pigsty
But so is your life and your mind
But I told you that I'd die
For you again and again
And I'll be up all night
Oh, you keep me up all night
I'm a little bit tired, boy
Get a little bit higher, boy
'Cause you don't give a shit
And it works so perfect for you
I wish I was more like you