bent a hook and in her spine, broke off a pin

Circling all day. Slow circles, heavy, shaking my head. Inevitable. Here again. I don't want to be here again.

Pain, there is. Anguish, there is. Hurt and confusion, and chaos on all sides. Mistrust? Maybe. Possibly. Who knows? I can't think that far ahead.

Circling. I keep coming back to the cliff edge. I keep stopping. I keep circling. There has to be a solution. There has to be something, something I'm missing, something I'm too blind to see.

Something. Circling. Waiting to be clouted by revelation.

But it's my fault, I'm told. It's me. I'm the one causing this pain. And if it is me, I have to stop. I have to stop.

If I am part of something in someone's life, part of something that hurts them, if I am part of what is hurting them, then I need to leave. If I am causing the pain, then I need to leave. If I am damage, then I as damage need to move far away, so that the damage I'm causing can heal.

Right?

That's logical. That makes sense. That's practical.

...but that's where I hit full stop. Full stop, no farther, I cannot go down this path. I cannot take another ending.

And even that's not true, I can take endings, endings, beginnings, they surface, they ebb, they happen all the time and I process them, I deal with them, I accept them every time. Life, death, comings and goings, beginnings, endings. Creation and destruction. It is life, it is my life, it is everyones' life, and it's the trade-off we make to be physical beings. We will be injured. We will suffer. We will die. We cannot have what we have, we cannot learn what we want to learn, if we cannot be harmed. If we cannot take the risk, we cannot learn the lessons.

Circling. To the edge of the cliff, circling. Back and forth, around and again. I cannot take that step. I cannot.

And I know this, the lessons of leaving, of endings, of failure, they all teach us things, necessary things. I know this, I've known this for a very long time. Sometimes relationships rise up, sometimes they falter, and sometimes when they falter the ground they grew in is poisoned. And if one side still loves, even if both sides still love...sometimes, it cannot improve. So much damage, it cannot be saved. It must end.

I know this.

...but that's where I stop. I can't. At the cliff's edge I'm halted, unable to step back for a moment, unable to step out into empty air and trust I'll end up where I need to be, when I finish the fall. I...cannot...move...forward.

I can't do this. I can't. No letting go, I can't do this. If I'm damage, then I change my nature. If I'm damage, then I have to fix me so I can't damage any further.

I keep thinking: this is like watching the sun rise in Winterfell. Something more of art than architecture, by design. Or mayhap, more chance than circumstance. Or maybe it really, truly, comes down to hacking the code, forcing the issue: because after all, the sun never rises in Winterfell.

Circling. Waiting for the impossible. Trying to have faith in spite of everything. Trying to listen, trying to learn, trying to accept. Trying to change.

Standing on the cliff edge, reaching out. I cannot take this step. I will not take this step. I will not walk so far away.

No letting go. I cannot. My path is not in leaving.



This is what I look like without a face.



I'm not sure this is helpful.