I have to listen to my head. I have to say no. I’m sorry.
There’s no getting around it. You chose to break my heart and I had a decision to make for myself. I decided to be brave. I decided to stand up for myself and I had to make the tougher choice. I needed to choose the more difficult route because I knew that it was something that would be better for me in the long run. Despite the fact that I still had feelings for you; despite the fact that I didn’t really want to lose you; despite the fact that I still wanted to keep you in my life, I refused to give you another chance.
You gave me your fair share of apologies. You told me that you were sorry. You said that you didn’t mean to hurt me. I knew that you were sincere, and that was why the choice that I had to make was a very difficult one. You asked me for another chance to prove yourself. You promised me that things would be different the second time around. You said that you were going to treat me better and all you needed was a second chance. I even believed you. But still, I had to say no. I couldn’t afford to give you another chance.
One thing that you really need to know about giving people second chances is that they never really turn out to be mere second chances. Once you give a person a second chance, then it opens up the prospect of maybe a third chance, a fourth chance, a fifth chance, and so on. You will end up having to push that line further and further until eventually, you won’t even know what to do with yourself anymore. Once you give in to a person’s promise to “never hurt you again”, what do you do when they break that promise? What do you do when they apologize once more and they tell you that they will try to do better next time? Where do you draw the line? Or will the line just cease to exist completely? And it’s not like you doubt their sincerity. It’s not like you don’t believe in their intentions to actually become better people. It’s just that human beings are flawed and sometimes, we can never live up to the things that we want for ourselves. And eventually, we just have to rewire our brains into forgetting the promises that were made in the past. We try to make everything fit into our ideal narrative even though we’ve completely let go of all of our principles; even when we have compromised all of our values. We are afraid of playing the villains; the people who couldn’t forgive the one who said “sorry”. And so as victims, we also end up villainizing ourselves in our own eyes.
Throughout the course of my existence, I have come to learn that human beings are predictable – they are mostly attracted to routines and predictable living. They love being able to immerse themselves in a stable and comfortable pattern that they can fully control and prepare for every single day. They like how they are able to produce a specified outcome so as long as they follow a simple protocol – steps that they need to achieve a particular goal. That is why a lot of human beings are so predictable with how they are going to react to particular situations. When faced with traumatic experiences or challenges, they will always tend to just revert back into their natural instincts and respond to these situations in pretty much a very consistent manner. And that also explains why a lot of people keep on committing the same mistakes multiple times. It’s not really out of a reluctance to learn or adapt – it’s more brought about by an uncontrollable desire to revert back into basic instincts.
My friend once told me that people are patterns — if you pay enough attention to them, you’ll come to find that they like routine. Reliable like formulas — just punch all the elements into your calculator and you’ll find the definitive outcome. They react to similar situations in similar ways; they act, for the most part, the same in every identical situation. That’s why we make the same mistakes over and over again — we react the way we’re hardwired to, just an equation that spits out all the same answers, no matter how many times you input the information.
While it is true that some incredible human specimens have the kind of willpower and mental fortitude that actually encourages them to change for the better, these are very rare and isolated cases. And I’m not willing to bet on those odds.
So as much as I want to give you another chance, as much as my heart aches to keep you in my life. I have to listen to my head. I have to say no. I’m sorry.