Remorse

How could I ever say I hate you? You showed me parts of myself I never would have discovered on my own. Despite our differences over the last year, the fact you want my friendship (unless I fucked it up that bad this time) means there’s something you see in me, something worth all the pain we sometimes cause each other.

I guess part of it is a fear for you, and the frustration that fear causes. The fact I know so much is going on beneath your surface, things I know you have yet to conquer. You want things to be simple, but how can this ever be simple for me, knowing what I know? Especially since in one of your rare moments of openness, you admitted to reflexively hiding things away?

I must have idealized the way you hid because I felt warmth in knowing I was one you found worthy of seeing the inner you. I was shown your interior, became a confidant of sorts. A person to turn to when troubled.

I can recover from a lack of physicality, or even real closeness. But what I’m struggling with is your performance. The fact I know everything you do is an act; the veil has been lifted. I can expect no sincerity from you, now that I’m no longer of romantic interest.

It is forbidden knowledge: once you know, you can’t unknow. You taught me to question your surface behavior, and I do; but now you leave me in the dark.

It’s not that I can’t accept reducing us to a simple friendship. It’s that a simple friendship is functionally impossible with what you’ve given me. You demand I play along, that I behave as if I never saw into your dark side.

But I don’t know how to play this game. I’ve never been good at hiding myself away.

But I can’t hate you, because I know enough to know where this behavior stems from. The walls you put up to survive with yourself. I pray I can learn to accept that you’re giving me what you can.