I confess:
I have spent my whole life trying not to become you,
and somehow I became the echo you left inside me.
You are the voice that narrates my every mistake,
the shadow that steps into every doorway before I do.
My Jiminy Cricket with a cracked shell,
teaching me right and wrong in a language
you never used on yourself.
I confess I understand you too well —
and that’s the curse, isn’t it?
We are the same coin flipped in opposite directions,
two sides trying to pretend we don’t share the same metal.
I know why you are the way you are,
and knowing it keeps me from hating you,
even when I want to —
even when I should.
But it also keeps me from forgiving you.
Because if I understand you,
you understand me.
If I know better,
you know better.
And still you carved little wounds into me
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
with habits you refused to break,
expectations you set on fire,
love you gave with one hand
and took back with the other.
I confess:
I want your approval like air.
I want to hand you my life like an essay
and wait for you to grade it.
I want to be enough —
not because the world says I am,
but because you say it
in that quiet voice I built inside my ribs
and mistook for my own.
I confess I’m tired of carrying your ghost
while you’re still alive.
Tired of calling your disappointment “motivation,”
tired of mistaking fear for guidance,
tired of missing a version of you
who never existed outside my imagination.
I confess I love you so much
that it hurts to breathe around it.
And I confess it terrifies me
that my conscience sounds like you —
because sometimes
it tells me I’ll never be enough,
and I forget that wasn’t my thought
but yours.
I confess all of this
because I don’t know how to say it to your face,
and because if I said it,
you’d nod like you already knew.
As if you were waiting for me
to learn the lesson
you never had the courage
to teach yourself.
