I'm so tired.

I'm not talking about being tired in the sense that I want to take a nap, or get a good night's sleep. I have plenty of reasons I feel that way: classes, work, dates, etc.

I'm tired in the way that causes my soul to ache, like the world hollowed me out.

You're missing right now, and no one knows if you'll ever be found. There's been some talk about you actually being in Paris, shooting off your mouth about the current events in Port Charles. Isn't that something? You got to run away from what you did while I was forced to pay the price. Who knows if you'll ever resurface in town to face the consequences you made me take…

I've been through a lot of crap, from my dad faking his death to being held hostage by a rabid Cyrus Renault. I carried that on my back, trying to cope with it all as I pushed ahead. I moved on from what my dad did, and I got justice with Cyrus going to prison until he croaks. They left profound impressions on me, leaving distinct scars behind, but those healed up enough to leave a faint shadow.

I'll be dealing with what you did to me for the rest of my life.

It was all personal. You run on spite and bitterness, targeting someone who dared to have a spine against you and doing everything you can to break it in two. I'm not sure where you learned to feel this way, or who broke you so badly that you wanted everyone to hurt with you. That doesn't really matter - the pain in the past doesn't condone the harm in the present. You dragged me through the proverbial mud, and if not for Oz Haggerty, my life would be over.

I'm not sure what's more pathetic: you going out of your way to hurt someone or you hurting someone over a man.

You know, at first, when you started your crusade, I felt a little bad. I certainly wasn't some saint at the time. You were Spencer's girlfriend, on-and-off, and he and I grew a little too close to be considered "friendly." I had no business imposing on your relationship. Of course, I only felt *a little* bad. As guilty as I felt about my behavior, that didn't change how bitchy and nasty you were as a person when you felt the slightest bit inconvenienced. The audacity was outstanding; it kind of still is.

You apologized God knows how many times, and I was a fool to even entertain the idea of accepting them, thinking maybe there was a chance for us without the Spencer of it all. I definitely learned the hard way that I was an idiot.

Who thinks of making revenge porn? Who thinks that the way to get back at someone is to film something so personal and private and blow it up for the world to see? Who thinks of violating someone so…intimately? Apparently you, since you filmed Joss and Cam and put them through unimaginable hell. Cam was beside himself while he processed it while Joss got the brunt of the world's "response." You hurt my two best friends, and if that wasn't bad enough, you dumped the responsibility, large and heavy as it was, onto my tiny shoulders.

You almost freaking killed me.

I saw a lot of the comments Joss got when you exposed her. A whole array of men ogling and degrading her body, reducing her to what they think they saw on the tape. It absolutely broke her heart, the weight of a million eyes on her and a million mouths offering an unwanted opinion. It broke mine too, and the pain hurt worse when it happened to me.

A tsunami of the worst aspects of the human condition: racism, sexism, unjustified pettiness, "righteous" indignation, death threats by the truckload. It was one comment after another, and part of me wanted to bite back and defend myself, but things would've gotten worse. All those eyes on Joss were now on me, and all those mouths frothed at the prospect of a black woman going to prison, regardless of whether or not she committed a crime. But I bet you knew that already.

Life turned into a complete circus. Anonymous nobodies giving their uninformed opinions, media vultures searching for something to feed said nobodies. I'm thankful Joss and Cam spoke up for me, defending me and rightfully implicating you. It was a risk, but it had to count for something. I think it did, and I know they did too.

But it just kept getting worse.

ADA Arden did her damndest to paint a bleak picture. A revolving door of witnesses, from you to Spencer to Rory, gave evidence that made things so much harder than it needed to be. The phone, the "motive," everything that could suggest my guilt was blown up to be something it wasn't. I knew I was innocent, I felt it in my bones, and Joss, Cam, and Diane did what they could to say so.

That didn't stop the agony, though.

I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders while I sat in that chair. A mix of anger and sorrow weighed on my heart, along with uncertainty and fear. I wanted to throw up, to just fall apart right then and there because it was all so suffocating. So much of my present and my future was in jeopardy, and there were a number of questions I really had to ask myself:

What if I do get convicted?

What if the appeal fails?

How long would I be locked away?

What would happen to me while in prison for a sex crime?

Would I have to be entered into the sex offender registry?

What happens once I'm burdened with that label?

What happens once I'm released?

Will I still have my friends or will my "record" deter them?

Will I be able to continue work at the Jerome Gallery or will my reputation be too much for Ava to handle?

Will I be able to live on my own or will I be trapped with my mother and her fiancé?

Will I be able to get back the normalcy I lost?

Will I be able to live any kind of life at all?

I asked myself every single one for every day the trial continued. Even when Diane presented her case, where I testified in my own defense and Spencer switched allegiances, it was still on my mind. All of that turned up to 11 when the judge shut down Oz testifying, and it was by the grace of God that he was awake and alert enough to tell the truth. And you lost. Instead of spending years in prison, where I'd be released to no future whatsoever, I got the hell out of dodge and only have to worry about rehabilitating my reputation. I still get to attend PCU, I still have my friends, I still have a job, I still have all the things I didn't want to lose because of you. But I also gained a trauma that'll take me YEARS to unpack and move on from. I'm still struggling through the initial stages of it with Dr. Collins.

In the end, though, you lost. I won. And now you're gone.

You can spend however long you want in Europe, hiding out from all the gross crimes you committed. You can sit there in your privilege and whine about how "unjust" it is that your perpetual victim came out victorious. It doesn't change a damn thing, because you lost and you have nothing to show for it. You lost Spencer, you lost a home in Wyndemere, you lost any chance of building a support group, and if you come back to Port Charles, you'll lose your freedom too. You did all you could to ruin me just because I liked a boy, but in the end, you were ruined. If that's not karmic justice, I'm not sure what is. There's not much else to say, but I just have to ask:

All of this for what?