Goodbye
I think the truth is people only treat you the way they believe you deserve to be treated, and after enough years of being left behind, replaced, ignored, betrayed, and looked down on, eventually you stop fighting it and accept what you are.
I kept thinking love could somehow outweigh reality. I thought maybe if I cared enough, stayed loyal enough, hurt quietly enough, somebody would finally see value in me that I could never see in myself. Instead, all I really learned was my place.
She deserves happiness. They all do. I do not blame anyone for choosing better over me. I do not blame family for struggling to respect a man who never became what he was supposed to become. I do not blame the people who stabbed me in the back either. Every blade landed exactly where it belonged.
The anger I carried for years was never meant for the world. It was meant for me. Because deep down I knew the truth long before I admitted it out loud. I was just too weak to accept it.
I spent most of my life trying to outrun the feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, something pathetic and broken that people could sense no matter how hard I tried to hide it. Maybe they were right all along.
Still, I tried. Even knowing I was losing. Even when surviving became habit instead of hope.
That has to be enough now.
Goodbye.