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[Michael]

I think about you a lot. More than I should, but I can't seem to help myself. It's been two years since we parted ways, and I still can't seem to let you go. You've moved on and found someone else while I'm still living in the past. Our time together haunts me. Not sure if that's because of how much you meant to me. Or if my lack of experience outside of the five years we had together forces me to focus on you. I sometimes wonder if I cross your mind. If you lie awake at night replaying the memories of our shared moments. Or did it all end for you when we said goodbye? Was the day I walked out the door the last time I occupied space in your thoughts?

I'll never know. I'm not even sure if I want to know. Honestly, it's probably better if I didn't. The truth hurts. You taught me that. You taught me a lot; about myself - about others, and it took the pain of goodbye to realize that. You showed me the darkest parts of love. Is that even what we had? I doubt it sometimes. I loved you - that I know, but I question if you loved me. You said it with words, but actions contradicted them.

I don't think you hurt the people you love - not in the way you hurt me.

Were you listening when I told you that letting people in was hard? Were you paying attention when I said that I had few people I trusted? If you were, you choose to ignore all that when you slept with my friend. When you manipulated my emotions and lied behind my back for a year. When I offered forgiveness, you took advantage and continued playing your game of secrets and lies.

But I can't blame you for me going back despite the damage. You stuck the knife in, but I was the one who twisted it in deeper. I begged you to stay even when you hurt me. And I shouldn't have. That was me being desperate for what I thought was love. I didn't want to be alone, and so I figured the pain was worth it.

I was wrong. Something that I've only started to see now. When the damage is already done and I can't bring myself to trust again.

A mistake that I'll never make twice.

I'm curious though, what did you learn from me? Did you walk from our time together with a different view? I know you saw the damage, but did it change you? I like to think that it did. It brings me comfort to think that I showed you how love should be. Not in the unhealthy way in which I let myself attach to you. But in the way that I cared for you.

That's the beauty of knowing I'll never see you again. That you'll never read this. I can make up the answers myself.

[Michael]

I'm so lost. It's a place I've been for the last two years. Stuck in this room in my mom's house, letting life pass me by. I think it's because I'm scared. Scared to go out and do, to live.

Scared to trust.

I'm scared to do a lot of things, I think.

I keep asking myself when it's going to change. Asking when I'm finally going to have that moment where it all just clicks. Where I stop being a statue and begin to move again. There's no answer.

I know I'm not happy like this. That I can't keep going on this path I'm walking down. It leads nowhere.

No job.

No education.

No value.

A bundle of ideas, creativity, and a desire to inspire but having none of it myself. I've got this heavy cloud over me. Suffocating, it twists and turns in my lungs, siphoning the air out until I'm left gasping. Nothing changes while it's over me.

Nothing changes if I don't make it.

I know that. It kills me that I do. To be smart enough to see the problem but lack the will to solve it - I hate it.