Around, not over

Cannot stop hearing it in her voice. Four-year-old open loop. I have spent four years believing I forgave it. I have said so, to myself, in those words. What I actually did was stop discussing it, and then mistake the quiet for the result, which is a completely different operation and one I would spot in a client in a single session. The tell was always there. You do not keep checking a thing you have finished with. Writing that down is unpleasant in a specific way I want to record accurately, because it is not guilt and it is not shame. It is closer to embarrassment at the scale of the self-deception, carried out by somebody with the exact professional training required to see it. Four years of expertise, pointed everywhere except at the desk in my own back room.