All she could imagine was their eyes. Their judging, cold, calculating eyes, staring at her; burning like lasers right through to her very core. Once more, she had let down the people that cared about her and she was on her own. The look on his face when she walked away from him was a mixture of betrayal and anger, combined with the inevitable realisation that she was, in fact, always going to be on the outer when it came to his world.
So she stayed back with her father; the only man she thought she could completely trust. Until he betrayed her. 'Abandonment issues, much?' she thought to herself bitterly. 'To hell with the lot of them. I'm better off alone.'
So she set off to see the world, instead only finding hurt and heartbreak at every turn. 'How many times can I put myself through this?' she asked herself time and time again. There was no answer of course; there never is.
She returned to the one place that she knew she had felt safety, security – even love. In the basement of the man who had come to her assistance on too many occasions, she tried to put her grief and her pain to one side, and embrace a new and unfamiliar feeling coursing through her veins. The whole while however, she felt the eyes of those she had once considered friends assessing, perusing, dissecting her – and she didn't like it, not one bit. Still, she persevered, hoping against hope that she was doing the right thing. Errors and mistakes were consistent though, and the unfortunate habit of leaping out of her skin at mysterious bumps in the night was increasing with remarkable speed.
Late one night, she lay in her bed and cried. There was nothing left, she was certain of it. She had hurt too many people, all the while hurting herself, and there was naught to be done about it. She had made the decision. She didn't know when, or how, or where, but she would one day vanish. Become a ghost. Nurse her pain closely to her chest and pay her penance in quiet. She would try and make amends for the negatives in her life, and give those she knew a chance to live their lives without her. She owed them that much.
***Sometime in the not-so-distant future***
The neighbours would start to complain if he kept banging on the door to her flat. Against his better judgement, his gut twanging incessantly, he picked the lock of her front door and let himself in. The small space had been cleaned spotlessly; there was barely a hint that anyone had lived there in the previous months. Moving from room to room, his anxiety rose as he scanned the flat for any clue of the whereabouts of its tenant. Finally, his eyes set upon a small piece of paper, folded once in half, sitting on the kitchen counter. Hands trembling slightly, he opened it up, only to read the words: I'm sorry.