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Description
Sometimes I want to rewind to that graduation ball, where the camera's gaze made me a deer in headlights, fleeing from the dance into the shadows. The memory of that instinctive terror never faded, and pity, more cutting than laughter, followed. She was there, that one... her attempt at comfort felt like a final blow, branding my soul with a mark of vulnerability I never wanted to show. Her kindness was the deepest cut, an unwanted balm on a wound I wished to hide. Is it because of this that, later in life, I chose to step into the light (or sometimes deeper into the night), even at times when I was terrified - and even when I shouldn't have?

Description
Sometimes I want to rewind to that graduation ball, where the camera's gaze made me a deer in headlights, fleeing from the dance into the shadows. The memory of that instinctive terror never faded, and pity, more cutting than laughter, followed. She was there, that one... her attempt at comfort felt like a final blow, branding my soul with a mark of vulnerability I never wanted to show. Her kindness was the deepest cut, an unwanted balm on a wound I wished to hide. Is it because of this that, later in life, I chose to step into the light (or sometimes deeper into the night), even at times when I was terrified - and even when I shouldn't have?