I confess.
I stayed when I shouldn’t have, and I know that now. I told myself I was helping. Told myself it was kinder to remain, to keep the light on, the door open. But that was a lie. I stayed because leaving felt like killing something with my own hands, and the responsibility of that was too much to bear.
So, I lingered. Learned how to sound gentle. Learned how to promise without promising anything at all. Maybe that was worse than anything Acceptance ever did.
I whispered maybe too many times, and they believed me. Is that really my fault? Can I be blamed for blinding someone from the obvious?
After all I didn’t force them to listen. I didn’t hold their face and make them look at me, I only stayed where I’d always been. I only did what I’ve always done. But I knew. Yes, I confess. I knew.
I felt the truth pressing against me every time I said not yet, every time I softened the edges so it wouldn’t cut so badly. I felt the weight every time they leaned on me; of the moment I should’ve let go. Still, I didn’t.
I didn’t let go because letting go was final. Because once I stepped aside, there would be nothing left to stand between them and the truth. Between them and destruction. I was holding them together. I believed that. I truly did. But the longer I linger, the more I felt them bending around me, shaping themselves smaller, quieter, so they could keep believing.
I confess I taught them how to wait. How to endure. How to call stillness strength. Is that such a bad thing? To teach someone how to survive? To give them something to hold when everything else was slipping? I tell myself that waiting is not the worst fate. Endurance is noble. There are worse things than standing still. But even now, I can feel how thin those words have become.
Sometimes I felt Acceptance arrive beside me. Silent. Watching. Not cruel, just finished. I hated it for that. I hated how calm it was, how easily it could close the door and walk away. I didn’t care, or at least I convinced myself that. Acceptance was cold. Bitter. Painful. But I think now that maybe it was just honest.
After some time, I stopped staying for the right reasons. I stayed because honesty would make me responsible. Because if I left, the waiting would have ended, and the ending would’ve been real. I was afraid of the moment they would stop looking for me, of the quiet that would follow once I was no longer needed.
I was afraid of leaving them with nothing, and more so of seeing that they could survive without me.
I confess I stayed, and I broke them anyway.