Unforgivable

Shame is the quietest demon. It doesn’t slam doors or scream in your face. It just stands at the edge of your bed and watches you try to sleep. It climbs into your suitcase before you leave town and finds you again in the hotel mirror. You think it’s buried until you hear a song or see a street name or pass someone with the same kind of eyes—and suddenly your gut turns over like a dog that knows it pissed on the rug.

They tell you shame is useless. That it doesn’t help. That guilt can motivate change, but shame only paralyzes. But no one ever tells you what to do when the shame feels earned.

I’ve done things I wouldn’t forgive in someone else. I’ve said things I’d crucify a stranger for. But when the guilty man is in your own skin, where the hell are you supposed to go?

The truth? I still carry all of it.

Not as a badge. As a burn.

Like the time I mocked the wrong kid in gym class because it bought me 20 seconds of acceptance from the cool kids.
Or when I slept with someone I barely knew and ghosted her the next morning because I was too chickenshit to say I wasn’t emotionally available.
Or when I left a roommate without warning and justified it in my head for years, even though I knew I’d fucked him over.
Or when I used someone else’s shame to make myself feel powerful for a single night—only to wake up hollow.

Or the women I kissed that I shouldn’t have. The calls I didn’t return. The ugly, perverted secrets I had when I was 14 and thought the internet could teach me how to be a man.

No one talks about this shit. Not really. We talk about growth, healing, moving forward. But what do you do when the wreckage you left behind still has people inside it?

Do you reach out and apologize after 20 years?
Do you show up in someone’s inbox and drop a guilt grenade on their carefully healed scar?
Or do you tell yourself they’re probably fine, and let sleeping dogs lie?

What if they don’t remember?
Worse: what if they do?

There’s no single answer. No tidy redemption arc. Some of the people I hurt are long gone. Some I see online sometimes and scroll right past, too afraid to break the fourth wall.

And here's the cruelest part: I’m a better man now because of all the shit I did then.
But being better doesn’t cancel the past.
It just means I know exactly how deep the knife went.

This is what fuels Gwi-ma in K-Pop: Demon Hunters. Shame. Regret. All the things we hide, lest they make us look less whole. But they are us. The haunted parts. The unshakable memories. The ghost limbs of who we were.

I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself fully.
I don’t think that’s the point.
I think the point is to carry the weight without letting it kill you.
To remember, not obsess.
To feel it, not perform it.

To not hide from the truth, even when it curdles in your throat.

We all want to believe we’re the hero of our own story. But every hero has a past. And some of us… we weren’t the hero. We were the side character who fucked things up and disappeared before the third act.

But I’m still here.
And I haven’t forgiven myself.
But I’m learning how to be someone worth forgiving.

That’s got to count for something.

Even if it doesn’t—I'm still showing up.