I’m haunted by the times I chose not to act.

One time when I was driving a bus full of high schoolers, I saw three middle schoolers walking home (they get out at the same time in the district I worked for). There where two boys and one girl and as I got closer, I saw they were harassing her. It looked like they were pulling her back pack or hair and probably talking nasty. As I passed, she whipped around and yelled at them.

I’m so haunted by this memory.

I should have done something.

As I drove away I thought of the options, but I could quite possibly face legal consequences if I stopped and let her on my bus. As someone who was bullied, mostly physically, by my neighbors, and mostly at the bus stop, I die inside.

This memory, almost three years ago, still plays in my head. I still run through it and wish with all of my soul I could go back and have helped her. I would have brought her back to school and told her to go to the principle’s. I could have just drove her further up the road so she had some distance between herself and the boys. I should have done SOMETHING.

Fuck my job. Fuck what the police would say. Fuck the angry parents. I failed her. I became a bystander.

I will probably live with his regret my whole life.

That tiny moment haunts me.

highassi:

shoutout to the pain that gave me understanding

An apology letter to myself…

I’m sorry…I’m sorry for the days that I laid in bed, without knowing or even trying to figure out your purpose for existing or without having a will to continue living.

I’m sorry that I doubted you, and your ability to walk this life with a genuine smile.

I’m sorry for living in that hopeless mindset for years and years, without getting up to try and fix it.

I held onto the thought of a potential life long failure, to keep myself safe from my own disappointment, when I’ve only really held you back from what you could have achieved. I’ve only pulled you away from the opportunities that could have landed you on a path of financial and mental wellbeing.

I should have treated this body like a temple, but instead I treated it as a landfill for hard drugs, bottles of liquor and slit wrists.

I chose to cope with the pain that trauma buried in the deepest part of my mind, in a way that only brought 10x more crisis and hurt into my life.

I’m sorry for the actions and the decisions I made through out my dismal years.

I’m sorry for all the times I’ve tried to kill you, without thinking about the second way out. But somehow we found it, floating in the missing thoughts that hopelessness hid from us.

So I’m sorry, but I also want to say thank you, because without the trauma, the horrible experiences, the childhood of pain, and all of the struggles, I wouldn’t have ever been able to find the strength I have now. I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the small things that a lot of people take for granted.

Thank you for helping me become the light when I stopped searching for it.

Risky Romance Ep-3