The pull doesn’t make sense to you because you can't fathom the cruelty it took for me to remain this gentle. You don't know how many times the world gave me reasons to be anything but kind, and how many times I had to choose softness over survival, grace over revenge, forgiveness over bitterness.

You hurt me because I saw you—clearly, sharply, painfully. I saw the truths you hid from yourself, the parts you refused to face, and I held up a mirror even when it burned my own hands. And still, when I had every reason to cut you back, I stayed gentle. I gave you kindness you never earned, compassion you never returned, and love that demanded nothing from you.

And maybe that’s what haunts you. Not my anger, not my bitterness—because I left none. Instead, you are haunted by the way I never became your cruelty. By my refusal to become like you, to let pain make me less. By the gentleness I gave when you least deserved it, by the kindness you burned through believing there would always be more.

But people like me don't come twice. You carry me, you remember me, you ache in the empty spaces I left—not because I haunt you intentionally, but because I was devastatingly real in a way you'll never feel again.