Author’s Note:
This piece is written from a place of personal accountability. It is not an attempt to reopen relationships, seek forgiveness, or alter how anyone feels about the harm I caused. Some amends are direct. Others must be lived. This is part of my living amends.
This piece is about what happens after harm is done and denial is no longer possible. After the stories collapse. After avoidance runs out. It is about guilt that cannot be outrun, shame that no longer gets to drive, and the choice to stay present with the damage instead of disappearing from it. This is not an explanation or a defense. It is an accounting. What follows is not written to change how anyone feels about me or what I did. It is written to mark the point where I stopped running and began doing the work of making amends.
Dancing Behind Old Bellingham City Hall
Tonight I danced behind Old Bellingham City Hall.
No audience.
No witnesses I was aware of.
No attempt to be seen.
Just my body moving against cold air, and a 125 BPM bass-heavy, melodic, experimental dubstep track called Drowning in the Drip by Minnesota.
The bass was slow, heavy, deliberate. Not chaotic. Not frantic. It pressed into my chest and ribs and gave my nervous system something solid to push against. Something honest.
I wasn’t dancing to feel good.
I was dancing to tell the truth.
Why I Was There
This week has been about making amends.
Not symbolic ones. Not poetic ones. Not the kind that sound good in writing or feel relieving in the moment. The kind that force you to sit with discomfort, responsibility, and the reality that some harm cannot be undone.
I have been carrying immense guilt and shame about how I have harmed people through long-standing destructive patterns. Especially how I ended a relationship that mattered deeply.
What I did was not love.
It was deep hatred of the person I was and had been avoiding my entire life. Hatred turned outward when I could no longer contain it. I did not face myself. I ran. And when I ran out of room, I detonated everything around me.
I cannot change what happened.
I cannot repair what is no longer available for repair.
I can only stop lying to myself about who I was being and commit to becoming someone different.
Tonight’s dance was part of that commitment.
I wasn’t trying to process intellectually. I’ve done enough of that.
I was letting my body participate in accountability.
The Body Doesn’t Lie
Dancing has always been one of the few places where I cannot hide.
I can hide in words.
I can hide in insight.
I can hide in remorse.
I can hide in self-annihilation.
I cannot hide in movement.
The body tells the truth faster than the mind. It shows where tension is held. Where fear lives. Where shame has been stored. When the bass drops, the body responds or it freezes. There is no narrative to protect you.
Every drop of that song felt like a confession.
Each movement was an act of staying instead of escaping. Letting sensation move through instead of suppressing it. Letting guilt exist without collapsing into shame.
This wasn’t about release in the sense of relief.
It was about integration.
The Weight I’ve Been Carrying
For a long time, I carried the belief that if I loved hard enough, tried hard enough, performed well enough, stayed attentive enough, and kept my internal struggles hidden, everything would remain safe.
That belief destroyed everything.
Fear drove my behavior long before the relationship ended. Fear of abandonment. Fear of rejection. Fear of losing love. Fear of being seen fully. Fear of conflict. Fear of my own instability.
Those fears expressed themselves as avoidance. Over and over again.
I avoided honest conversations.
I avoided vulnerability.
I avoided asking for help.
I avoided accountability.
I avoided myself.
I did not bring my struggles into partnership. I managed them alone until they overwhelmed me. When they finally did, I shifted blame outward when it had absolutely nothing to do with the person I harmed.
Nothing.
My fears, shame, self-hatred, instability, and avoidance were mine alone. Yet I made someone else pay the price.
Avoidance didn’t just damage the relationship. It destroyed it completely.
I own that.
Writing the Letters Without Demands
This week, I wrote letters to people I have hurt emotionally.
They were not written to reopen relationships.
They were not written to seek forgiveness or reassurance.
They were not written to start conversations or elicit responses.
They were written because accountability demanded it.
I made my amends explicitly clear that there was no expectation attached.
No response requested.
No acknowledgment required.
No conversation invited.
Read it or disregard it.
I am not asking the people I harmed to change how they feel about what I did.
I am not asking them to change how they feel about me.
Those feelings are earned.
They belong to them.
Amends are not negotiations. They are not attempts to manage perception or reduce consequences. They are acts of responsibility, independent of outcome.
I did not ask for anything from these people.
Apologies Versus Amends
An apology is a statement.
An amend is a change.
Apologies acknowledge that harm occurred.
Amends demonstrate that it will not happen again.
That distinction matters.
People who have been harmed do not need better explanations. They need evidence. Evidence that behavior has changed. Evidence that the patterns that caused the harm are being dismantled, not hidden or rebranded.
Living amends are not dramatic. They are repetitive, quiet, relentless. They show up in how you communicate, how you regulate, how you ask for help, and how you stop making unilateral decisions that protect you at someone else’s expense.
Tonight’s dance was a living amend. Not because dancing fixes anything, but because I stayed present with what I had done instead of running from it.
Consequences I Earned and Deserve
I earned and deserve the consequences of my actions.
I earned and deserve the loss of trust.
I earned and deserve the severing of connection.
I earned and deserve the permanence of separation.
My decisions did not just impact any one person. They impacted their loved ones, their supports, their stability, their sense of safety, and their world. I destabilized far more than I ever had to.
Those consequences are serious.
They are deserved.
They are not mine to argue with.
Accepting them does not erase the harm. It means I am no longer denying it, minimizing it, or trying to outrun it.
The Patterns I Am Ending
I am not managing these patterns anymore.
I am ending them.
- I am eliminating my avoidance.
- I am eliminating my poor communication.
- I am eliminating my performative personas.
- I am eliminating my lack of boundaries.
- I am eliminating my anxious attachment issues.
- I am eliminating my insecurities.
- I am eliminating my fear of abandonment.
- I am eliminating my fear of rejection.
- I am eliminating my fear of loss of love.
- I am eliminating my other relationship fears.
- I am eliminating my trauma responses.
- I am eliminating rebound relationships.
- I am eliminating my self-hatred.
- I am eliminating my deep internal shame.
- I am eliminating my mental poisons.
- I am eliminating my poor mental health management.
- I am eliminating my substance and alcohol use.
- I am eliminating blame shifting, dodging accountability, and denying ownership of harms I have caused others.
- I am eliminating not acting in integrity or honesty with myself and others.
These patterns protected me once.
They no longer do.
Now they only destroy.
I am done living in them.
Guilt Without Shame
Shame says I am broken and unworthy.
Guilt says I did something wrong and need to change.
Shame leads to hiding.
Guilt can lead to repair.
I am choosing guilt without shame.
I am not excusing myself.
I am not absolving myself.
I am separating responsibility from self-annihilation. Shame keeps people stuck. Accountability moves people forward.
Facing what I did directly is painful. It should be. That pain is proportional to the harm. But staying trapped in shame would only guarantee repetition.
I refuse to repeat this.
What the Dance Gave Me
Behind Old Bellingham City Hall, with that bass hitting steady and heavy, something shifted.
Not erased.
Not forgiven.
Not resolved.
Integrated.
The guilt didn’t disappear. It softened into something usable. Something that fuels change instead of collapse.
My body remembered freedom that does not come from escape, substances, distraction, or performance.
Freedom that comes from alignment.
From staying.
From telling the truth.
From not running.
What Comes Next
This is not a redemption arc.
This is not a comeback story.
This is not about being seen as good.
This is about never repeating the harm. Never repeating my old patterns.
I do not expect forgiveness.
I do not expect reconciliation.
I do not expect acknowledgment.
I do not expect a response.
I do not expect a conversation.
I expect myself to live differently.
Tonight was one step. Tomorrow will require many more. Consistency will matter more than insight. Behavior will matter more than words.
But tonight, behind Old Bellingham City Hall, with the bass grounding me in my body, I chose accountability over avoidance.
And that choice is how this changes for good.
Drowning is what happens when avoidance finally fails. Amends are what happen when you stop fighting the water and stop asking to be saved. I will carry the consequences of my actions whether anyone ever sees this or not. What matters now is that the patterns that caused the harm are being dismantled at their roots. Not rebranded. Not hidden. Not deferred. This is the work I am committed to for the rest of my life. No audience. No demands. No escape.