The mirage of the dream

No matter what I did, it always ended the same.
A cycle, a loop, as if fate laughed in the face of effort,
How I could never get close enough, not even a breath away.
Once I thought I had it, that fleeting feeling of "almost there,"
It slipped like sand through fingers,
Not even close, not even a bit, not at all.

This "dream," they call it—yet it's no dream at all.
It's an everlasting nightmare,
A shadow of something I once believed in,
Now twisted, blurry at the edges,
And I can't even tell what's real anymore.

Is it the dream that’s slipping away, or am I?
Perhaps the cruelest trick of all
Is how the mind warps the line between desire and despair,
Between the dream and the nightmare,
Until both become the same fog,
And I stand here, lost in it, never knowing which is which.

But in this endless chase, I wonder—

Is the dream real, or is it the nightmare that speaks the truth?