Credit Due

**Just words that needed to be poured out for a healing to *hopefully* begin.

___

I'm not normally one to be easily fooled. For this reason alone, I must issue your credit due. Because, my dear, you sure had me going there, for a day or two. Or was it a week? Honestly, I can't recall.

If I'm being honest, perhaps with myself more than you, I suppose it was the height of stupidity for me. Frankly, I gave you your in before you even asked. Naming my own naivete, and calling it as such... I painted the target and handed you the bow.

I suppose I should deduct a point or two in light of this. And I think I will. But I'll issue you them back with bonus points for your lack of shame. I underestimated you in that regard. I suppose I trusted the unspoken code. The sanctity of the forum in which we resided. I forgot that danger doesn't just lurk in the shadows. But what do I know of the shadows?

You saw that, didn't you? The lack of pretense, the dogmatic faith in my own plainness. I joked in the beginning that it was you and not I who was the siren. I should have seen the truth in my own words. Maybe I did. It's hard to tell anymore.

You saw the vulnerability though. More than just the usual. More than just beaten down. More than just exhausted from weeks of no sleep and days upon days without food. Lips parched and peeling from the lack of water. You must have been salivating already. But then I added that cherry to the top, didn't I?

Voluntarily sharing my own failure to understand. Systematically listing off my insecurities. Outing my own naivete in the matters of love, the motives of men. At least, in regards to myself. I wrote the script for you, and all you had to do was read the part.

I can't help but laugh as I look back. I know this all too well. Had I been the trusted ear of a friend or stranger, I'd have seen the red flag waving wildly in the wind of the brewing storm. But that was the best part, wasn't it? Never in a million years would I have seen you coming for...me... I still don't believe it. Even as I stand over my own slaughtered body, looking down at the shell you've left behind... Still, I wonder.

You played it close to the chest, though. Slow and steady, you sure won that race, using every trick and strength in your possession. Showering the affirmations while simultaneously issuing a drought, a self-proclaimed lack of interest in anything I had to offer other than seeing some good person you wanted to nourish out of the good of your heart. Man, you were smooth.

Was there ever a moment that gave you pause? Just the briefest of hesitations to release the arrow?

Didn't the ease of it steal some of the glory? I gave you the numbers:

• Forty days and nights with less than twenty hours of sleep between them.
• Seven days without a single calorie.
• Days without a single drop of water.
• Weeks of withdrawals from the medications that help me hold onto even the tiniest sliver of sanity.
• Days, weeks, months, years of unrelenting mind games on top of the decades of brutal attacks upon my own self-esteem and sense of worth.

Did seriously none of this for a moment give you pause?

I should have known from the get-go. No one takes the time to build me up. Red flag number one. But I kept going.

You escalated from building me up to somehow magically knowing all of the things of myself I still held onto as good. How did you know them all? Do I wear this much of myself upon my sleeve? I suppose I never thought I did, because... well, no one ever seemed to notice or care before.

And then there you were when I was at the most vulnerable moment of my life. I can't help but laugh at my own stupidity now. Of course it was a charade. No one has cared before. Why did I think in that, the lowest moment in my life, suddenly someone... like you... suddenly not only saw those things in me, but wanted to hold onto them, cherish them, feed and nourish them.

God, what an idiot I was. I didn't just fall for the bait and step in the trap, I happily slit my own throat and cleaned my own carcass for you. And you knew just when to withdraw, to make me chase after you. Not until you'd given my step that boost, though.

No. You knew better than that. You gave me that confidence first. Feeding my ego until I believed just maybe it was true. And then, when I allowed myself to hope, you swept the rug away. You left me free-falling in the air without a safety net. What else would I do but reach out for you?

And you were there, weren't you. Gone one second. Grasping my hand the next. Pulling me close to your chest, promising security and comfort. Petting my hair until I felt safe enough to sleep. And in my dreamy state, you pounced.

You played your cards just right. I'll never deny your skillful manipulation. You're an artist, my love. And just when I finally let you in... I finally let myself trust. You took what you wanted all along but convinced me was what I needed.

You didn't play for the body... you aimed for the soul. And you never miss your mark, do you?

Well, step right up and claim your prize. Another target filled, another soul claimed. Another life ruined.

And please don't try to tell me I was the only one. You're far too practiced for that. In the end, it's your skill that outed you to me. Though, it took far too long.

Do you want to know what hurts the most?

The fact that it hurts. That you were good enough to make me believe it to the point that I still can't quite convince myself it was all a ruse. That I go to bed crying over missing you, fighting every second of the day with myself, pummeling myself not to reach back out to you.

And you're there when I do. But never when I don't. I'm too old to finally understand the term: "ghosting." I could have gone five lifetimes without knowing that to its full extent.

They tell me to give myself grace. Those who know. They see it so clearly. Just another vampire feeding off the vulnerable. I see it, too. I try to let it be enough. The knowledge of what you are.

But it just still doesn't feel like it. And that's what's going to kill me. The tiniest sliver of doubt that maybe... just maybe, you did/do actually see something good in me. The fact that I can't stop hoping. The undeniable truth that once again, I know--I was right all along... nobody like you could ever truly care for... someone like me.