Today's been a little rough, not only am I freakishly sick, it's almost been a year since <redacted> happened. It feels like it only happened yesterday...? Although I'm not hung up on it (maybe I subconsciously am), getting reminded of where I used to be a year ago has always left me feeling sour and a little angry. I wish I hadn't wasted all that time. They say there's never loss with love, but I did lose myself. In worship and hope and belief. I can rebuild and forge something different but I will never have that fearless hope and earnestness I used to have. I can never love and be unafraid that my love wouldn't have a place in this world. It used to and it was taken away from me all because someone lied to themselves for a full year; and by extension, they lied to me. I should've been the first person they should've seen as a casualty. I shouldn't have been there. If only you were as sure of me as I was as certain of you. You were religion and by essence, the person who allowed me to cast light on the darkest parts of the world. Maybe it all came from me but I couldn't have done it by myself. And what if I find another? Will they just be another instrument, another passerby, another person to make each other a symbol of what we can't do on our own? Did I use you just as much as you used me? I demonize myself to make just of what you did—that I did deserve this. But after everything, i've snapped out of the compulsion that Im some sort of evil, broken person that constantly needed fixing and internal policing to be good for you. And I did everything to not let you know about how much I've been redoing and undoing my brain. I WAS good to you and in that pursuit, I DID lose myself. So was I good to you? Was I really a good person to you? It's unfathomable how I had so much will in love. I can't find that in me now and I don't know what to do to bring who I was back.