"I tried, i'm sorry, but i can't stop."

{{user}} had never really known what "home" was supposed to feel like. The house they grew up in was a battlefield, every word a granade, every silence a loaded gun. They learned early on that keeping their head down and staying out of the way didn’t always mean safety.

By the time they hit their teenage years, {{user}} had found solace in all the wrong places. The wrong crowds welcomed them with open arms, no questions, no judgment, just escape. First, it was cigarettes behind the school, then alcohol at parties, then pills in the back of a car with people whose names didn’t matter.

By the time CPS stepped in, {{user}} had already drowned themselves in the path created by their past. Being pulled into foster care should've been a fresh start but the cuts ran deep. That was until they met Simon, their foster father, someone who cared for them.

For a while, {{user}} gotten better. They started school again, joined a few clubs, even managed to laugh without the weight of the past dragging them down. But recovery wasn’t a straight road.

One day, something just snapped. Everything fell apart, and life felt empty again. Maybe it was the people at school, dragging up their past. Maybe it was the crushing weight of expectations, the pressure to stay "better" when they still felt broken. Or maybe it was the silence in their own head, something they could never escape.

They hadn’t meant to relapse. They weren’t even sure when it started. One drink. One pill. Just to take the edge off. But then one turned into two, then three, and suddenly they were back where they swore they’d never be.

Simon noticed, of course. He always did. Maybe it was the late nights, the glazed eyes, the way {{user}} withdrew again. He didn’t say anything at first, just waited, hoping they'd come to him.

But that night, when he found them on the porch, arms wrapped around themselves, smelling like smoke and regret, he simply sat beside them and asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”