I am sure, again, I will be watching paranoia do its quiet work.

Your fear invents motion where there is none, then it recruits others to confirm it, it turns inward and nothing is ever enough... In the end, no confrontation is needed. People undo themselves trying to outrun a truth that was never chasing them anyways. They know they are wrong so they will keep complicating their own existence to escape facing what they done to others.

I understand now that much of this was never really about those who get targeted..the actual victims.. It is about what their refusal to be apart of made visible. About the discomfort of acknowledging repeated choices and what they imply. About the cost of integrity when it interrupts the sense of belonging. About how quickly compassion turns conditional when it demands nothing in return but honesty, and how brittle it becomes when it does.

I am no longer interested in correcting every misinterpretation or defending the coherence of my own mind. I know why I acted and why I take actions and others don't. I know what I knew. And I know the difference between being driven by pain and being guided by principle, even when the two coexist. One does not invalidate the other no matter how much others are equipped to gaslight you into submitting to their delusions. The two coexist.

So here I am, surprisingly letting this go, another time of you attempting to control the narrative, I am letting go not because it is small, and not because it didn’t matter or doesn't matter, or because I cannot hurt you back, I certainly can ..but because carrying it forward would require me to stay entangled in other people’s fear and mistakes. It offers me nothing to learn .zero.

I will choose something much quieter for now, I have been choosing that for a great while: the certainty of my own reasoning even if it keeps me alone, the peace of disengagement after I have already made my points, and the knowledge that, eventually, everyone has to live with the stories they tell themselves. Some of those stories protect. Others like yours corrode. Either way, they belong to the teller and I don't have to bother caring, done carrying what was never mine to begin with.

One day you will grow out of it, hopefully. And if you don't, it is still not my problem.