People take all they can take and I just run ‘em away. I push before they can leave first. I say the sharpest thing in the room because silence feels like surrender. Even I can’t believe some of the stuff that comes out of my mouth— words that land like punches I didn’t mean to throw, but I threw them anyway. The holes in the walls can easily be fixed with mud. A quick patch, some paint, good as new. No one asks questions. No one remembers the dent after a while. But the holes in us? Those don’t patch the same. You can fill them with apologies, time, tears, promises— but the shape stays. The scar tissue remembers the shape of the hurt. They can only be mended, never fixed. Because people forgive you… but they can never forget. I’ve seen it in their eyes months later— that flicker when my name comes up, the half-second hesitation before the hug, the way laughter stops just short when I walk in. Forgiven? Yeah. Forgotten? Never. And the worst part? I’m still doing it. Still running people away before they get the chance to leave on their own terms. Still saying things I’ll regret at 3 a.m. Still staring at the patched wall and pretending the inside isn’t cracked too. I don’t want to keep breaking things I love. I don’t want to keep being the reason people walk softer around me. I want to learn how to stay in the room when it gets hard. How to swallow the venom instead of spitting it. How to let love fill the holes instead of more mud. Because love is the only thing that mends without pretending the break never happened. It doesn’t erase the memory. It just makes the scar part of the story instead of the ending. If you’ve got holes in you from someone else… or if you’re the one who put them there… know this: Mending is slow. It’s messy. It’s honest. And it’s the only way forward that doesn’t leave more wreckage. People can forgive. But forgetting isn’t the goal. Healing is.