It's hard to admit you're wrong. I know. I've been doing it for years. Lying to myself, trying desperately in vain to justify things, to give myself something to hold myself up with, and I can't do this any longer. I've been wrong, again, and again, and again, and things are crashing down around me.

This carefully constructed place of self-deceit, that I've spent years building came with a fatal flaw. Me.

It just took one fleeting moment of clarity, and I watched my world crumble. This cold visage I've worn to protect myself crack in two, revealing the empty husk of a man inside.

I used to tell myself that I was only one bad day from becoming exactly like you. We were so much alike, you and I. The parallels were uncanny.

But, I've come to realize the opposite is true. You were always the one in danger of becoming me. You had worth left, value, a light in you.

I never had any of that. I fell to the darkness long ago, and when I fell, I had no one there to pull me back out.

My mind is racing as I type these words. Trying in vain to justify what I did. As much as I'd love to be able to claim that I was sick, that my actions were not my own, I cannot. There is a grain of truth in that lie, but the greater truth is that I wasn't strong enough to stop myself from hurting those that mattered most. And I lost the ones that mattered for my own weakness.

I'm both ashamed and relieved to admit this. But, I know in the end, admitting this is the first rung of the ladder I must scale to ascend from this all-consuming darkness. The first step of becoming better. I know, that you may never even read these words. But, even typing them, just for the sake of admitting I was wrong to myself, there is great value.

I hope you are well. I hope that you still carry that light inside of you. And most of all, I hope that if the darkness ever threatens to take you, the ones that matter to you are able to pull you back out, for I know the ones that will save you are the ones I have forsaken,so long ago,