Tell Me That It Is True

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I told you I loved you. That was not a lie. I meant it when I said it. I meant it every time that I said it, wrote it, messaged it, voice mailed it, gifted it and e-mailed it. I knew how to portray it. That wasn’t hard. There is so much material available for me to know what to say, how to say it, what to do and how to do it.

I have seen it when it has been directed at me time and time again. All I had to do was mirror it. I have had enough people fall under my spell and love me so that I recognise love when I see it. It became simple enough to replicate it. My intentions really were noble. I wanted to love you and I gave you the love that I knew that you wanted. I did enough to fathom out how you wanted to be loved.

Goodness knows I put in the spadework. I observed you and saw who you interacted with. I followed you to the places you frequented and noted what you ordered most often to eat and to drink. I sat behind you on the bus one time and saw the book that you read. I recognised the author so I went and bought three other of her titles and displayed them at home in readiness to show you and to let you borrow those which you had not read yet.

I dispatched a Lieutenant to chat you up and gather more information for me to collate and consider. I trawled the internet looking for your footprints. I sat up late as my phone buzzed and pinged with the messages from other prospects that I was cultivating but I made them wait as I searched for you. I found you and using a reliable false profile in the name of a friend of the opposite sex to me I managed to secure your online friendship. I did not approach you directly, despite the cloak of anonymity.

I preferred to walk like a ghost through your cyber world, observing your photographs and establishing the places where they were taken. I noted who your friends were, I highlighted potential competitors and I discerned who your family are. I took in the YouTube postings and when they were timed which told me you enjoyed a few glasses of wine in the evening on your own as you posted musical memories from your teenage years. I walked through your posts and your comments, picking up snippets of information that detailed your devotion to romance, your love of small dogs and your dislike of the cold. Like a silent, vast machine I remained your unseen companion for a month as I sucked up as much information as I could in order to build a picture of you and how you wanted to be loved.

Each meme you posted gave me a clue. Every discussion with your friends added further layers as I created the person that would love you. I uploaded to him your interests and made them his. I bolted on the necessary skill sets which would please you. I furnished him with the choice phrases that you wanted to hear. I configured his actions, expressions, behaviours and more that would make him provide you with the love that you wanted to much and once all of this considerable preparatory work was complete I began my seduction.

I loved you. I loved you with passion, desire, attentiveness, excitement, mystery and kindness. All created from the morass of information that I had gathered about you which was layered onto my existing experience from previous relationships and my knowledge of how love operates in the world. I know that it worked. You fell for me hook, line and sinker and you became enveloped in my creation where you flourished, you shone and you bloomed. Your happiness radiated from you like sunbeams, the pleasure you took in us being together was tangible and all of those around us commented as such. It was marvellous, spectacular, wonderful and perfect.

You had no idea that my love was a creation. Why would you when not only did it match your concept of love but driven by my excellence it exceeded it? Why would you challenge something that felt so golden and so glorious? You would not. I gave you this love and you returned it. It was a match made in heaven. It was a transaction that suited us both. You received my scintillating synthetic love and you gave me the love that sustains me, that emotion infused reaction which powers and sustains me. We both were winners.

Was it such a bad thing that what I gave you was a fabrication if it looked like the real thing? I might even go so far as to say that it was even better than the real thing. Am I to be regarded as a bad person for this fraudulent act. Is it not the case that my deceit pleased you? Yes, you did not know about this deceit, you had no awareness of the fabrication but that caused you no harm did it? You saw and you believed and seeing is believing surely?

When I took you in my arms, shielding you from the black day that you had emerged from and you looked into my eyes and saw the love, the devotion and the optimism that burned there, did it really matter that I was mirroring what you showed me so long as it made you happy, elated and feel loved? My optimistic eyes were your optimistic eyes.

When I unleashed my hatred you could not and still do not understand how someone could treat you like that when that person kept saying that he loved you.

It was easy to switch to this vicious malevolence. It was easy to peel back the veneer that was the manufactured love. It was easy to switch off the creation that I made that provided you with this perfect love. A flick of a switch and he ceased to exist, leaving you with something else instead.

I did not lie when I said that I loved you.

I did not lie when I whispered that I loved you.

I did not lie when I shouted that I loved you.

I just did not tell you the truth.

The truth that I never felt love for you.

Because I cannot do that.