Abrupt end is intentional (read last line) --- Forgive me for the person I pretend to be and how easy it's become. Forgive me for the relationships I let rot because fixing them would mean admitting what I did. Forgive me for the lies that turned into load-bearing walls. Forgive me for enjoying it when someone I smile at fails. Forgive me anyway. Nobody's home. This is what I brought. I'm not asking to be clean. Just somewhere this can land without coming back to me. Forgive me for the cruelty I renamed honesty. For the silence I renamed kindness. For knowing the difference. Forgive me for the distance between who I am at 2 a.m. and who I am when anyone's watching. For the hierarchy. The favourite. The one I'd let go of first. Forgive me for answering "I'm fine" so many times it stopped being a lie and became a door I welded shut. Forgive me for the addiction I keep calling a habit I keep calling a preference I keep calling a personality. Forgive me for the grief that didn't come and performing it anyway. For the grief that came years too late for someone who didn't earn it. Forgive me for the relief I felt when they stopped calling, when I was finally alone and the first thing wasn't loneliness. Forgive me for how rarely I think about the people who think about me constantly. For the fantasy of vanishing. Not dying. Just not being here. Forgive me for suspecting my suffering isn't special, that it's ordinary, that I turned it into a personality because the alternative is having no excuse. Forgive me for knowing exactly what to do. For not doing it. For how long that list has stayed the same. Forgive me for the version of myself I abandoned to survive something that, in hindsight, maybe I could have survived intact. For mourning him anyway, that younger self, like a sibling I smothered in his sleep. Forgive me for wanting to be seen and being terrified of being seen. For still hoping. For not knowing what for. Forgive me anyway. This is all of me. The ugliest parts. Forgive me for saying this into an empty room where no one's listening, for knowing nothing is required of me, for knowing that's why I'm saying it here. Forgive me for the breath I'm about to take. Forgive me for walking out like nothing happened. [Cut]
