The need for control. The desire to make things right for the people I care about. The exhaustion caused by carrying the responsibility of fixing things I didn’t break and could never repair. The tendency to act instead of listen. All of it was written in my history with Mallory. A checklist of destruction with boxes I ticked off on my own. No matter how much I might have wanted to, I couldn’t deny it, so I accepted Ben’s assessment and began the hard work of unlearning the behaviors I’d been practicing for far too long. It’s been over three years now, and I still fuck up sometimes, but not
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