Simple version: yes, I am insane, and yes, I am sorry. I wish I could make things right but I don’t know how. I don’t have anything I can use to do that. All the things I would’ve looked to, I already know won’t work. You told me they don’t do you any good, so… I don’t know what else I could try. There’s one thing left that might’ve worked if I’d tried it before, if I’d known it was there for me to try before, but I’m pretty sure that’s gone to cinders now.
I don’t know if this is an apology you want me to belabor or not. I don’t know if, after a month, you still want one from me. I don’t even know if you’ll ever read it.
So, look… I’m sorry. I can’t make this better. So much has happened since that day. I’ve had to come to terms with so much under the surface of me. I don’t have the strength left after that to make this better. I know that’s awful of me, but if I tried to come back, if I tried to do any of the kinds of things I’m afraid you’ll need me to do to make up for my wrongs, I know I’d just snap the next time the pressure gets too much and make things even worse. I’ll just do what I should’ve done from the start and take the blow of admitting this:
I can’t help. There is nothing left I can give. I hurt you and others, and I can’t fix it. I’m sorry.
I do know that belaboring myself over my mistakes is how I dig down to the roots. Figure out where, figure out why I went wrong so I can change the parts of me that must change to do better next time. I’d like to think maybe some of my processing could be useful for you, but that would be a side-effect. Maybe the best thing I can do for you and everyone else in that community is to accept that you might make me the villain in your story.
Whether it’s villain or laughingstock, I hope I fit the role well. I really do.
I’m writing this for me, and publishing it because the idea of you having the possibility of seeing it is important to my own soul-searching. And I’m not trying to send it over DMs because it feels too soon, or I’m too scared and uncertain over what would happen if I tried, or I just don’t think it’s the right approach. Or all three.
So, I’m sorry. That is the only absolutely true thing I can say of my feelings about all this.
If context will help, if having the leisure to read the perspective of a madwoman will help–and, sorry, this is… this is just how I communicate. These are just the words that fit me. So if getting to go through that at your own pace would help, I was going to attach the long, messy, painful version of this below. But that got too long, and it’s really just for my sake, so I didn’t. Probably for the best.
Either way, I’m sorry. I guess I am just… just a bad person.
Ashenvein Gate: Stories & Dreams 