Final Testimony of Regret and Release

Final Testimony of Regret and Release

I have few regrets in my life — but when I do, they are carved deep. I regret ever sharing a bed with you. I regret ever letting you past my door. I regret every kiss, every touch, every breath I wasted on what turned out to be nothing — lies dressed as love.

I regret walking away from Jimmy for you. I regret walking away from Solomon. Both men had more character, more ambition, more compassion, and more follow-through than you ever did. I regret leaving the door open for you when you wandered to Remington, Brian, Alex, Skyler, Michael, and all the others — at least the ones I can remember by name.

I regret taking you back four times. Each time you swore you were sorry, that you were just “working through some things.” But the truth was always the same — you wanted what I could give, not who I was. I was a fool to believe otherwise.

I regret calling the police that day, the day I stepped in between you and Skyler during your drug-fueled chaos. I regret trying to save you, because you never wanted to be saved. People don’t know that I wasn’t even home the night before. They don’t know that you were offered rehab — a chance to turn it around — and chose to weaponize your pain instead. They don’t know that you manipulated me, threatening abandonment, filming my breakdowns, using my reactions as justification to leave. That’s reactive abuse. Fourteen years of it.

People don’t know that you were getting tested for STIs every two weeks and said nothing. I didn’t find out until after you left — and still don’t know why. That silence told me everything.

A year of silence has brought everything into focus. It showed me what I couldn’t admit: you were never capable of love beyond yourself. You’ll make promises so long as the gifts, the trips, the luxuries keep coming. But the minute something new catches your eye, you wander.

I regret being so naïve. I regret believing in something that never existed outside my own hope. But I no longer regret letting go.

When the time comes — and it will — when you reach for me, please don’t. Don’t call. Don’t show up. Don’t ask how I am.

When the mirroring becomes unbearable, and you realize you’ve absorbed another man’s life, his interests, his voice — just as you always do — don’t come looking for me. When that pattern collapses again, and you find yourself lost, it’s because you’ve never learned who you are without a reflection to feed on.

I was the only one you didn’t mirror, and I regret that I’m the one who called for help — the call that saved you, the call that freed you, the call that excused you from all accountability. Sobriety looks good on you, but you’ll never feel the weight of what it cost. How could you? All you saw was that I took away your “freedom” — your freedom to run, to use, to betray. You used that story to make yourself the victim and have everything handed to you.

Deep down, I know you know the truth. And when that truth finally finds you, when it claws at your conscience, when you want to reach for the one person who truly loved you — don’t. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want anything to do with you ever again.

I believe the gods will absolve me of my covenant with you. You didn’t marry me out of love — you married me out of fear. You couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else having me, so you locked me in with vows you never intended to honor, using God as a weapon.

And for that, I will never forgive you.