Disclaimer: Not Joss and not Level 42 so not mine!
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Season 4 BtVS especially Sanctuary and The Yoko Factor but my Buffyverse
Distribution: Ask and you (probably!) shall receive
Thanx: DB/SMG...keep inspiring me
Author's Notes: Lyrics in Italics
Summary: Read it and see!!!

I can't do this anymore; I can't live the lie. I need to grow up and take responsibility for my life and my actions. Too many people are getting hurt by the way I am behaving. It has to stop.

The decision wasn't that hard to make and once I was decided it was like a weight being lifted from my heart and my shoulders. I began to form a plan of action, making phone calls, arranging things. Everything is ready now.

I won't be here when you come home
I'm sorry if you don't understand, forgive me if you can
But I can see another road
And I ain't coming back

I'm leaving everything here, a kind of symbolic casting off of who I have become. I need to get back to me and I can't do that here and I certainly can't do it with you. Possessions don't mean that much. I have my friends, I have me and I have...well, you don't really need to know about that. Let's just say that you're free to do what you like with my things, I won't be back for them.

Don't look for me around this town
'Cause I will be so far away, you'll never find me anywhere
And I won't take no souvenirs
No perfumed picture promises
Because it's over
And I ain't coming back

I can't say how sorry I am that things have ended up this way. I should never have got involved with you. If I am honest I was using you from the start. Trying to find something with you that I could never have. Trying to make you into someone you could never be.

You gave me everything
And now I'm breaking your heart
You know that I don't mean
To tear your world apart

I can't do this face to face because I know that you'll beg me not to and I'm too much of a coward to face the consequences of that. This is all my fault. It took seeing him again to make me realize that being with you was a compromise. Seeing him holding Faith stirred up feelings that I though long since dead and buried, or rather, feelings that I used you to convince myself were long dead and buried. I have to set you free so that you can find the right person. She isn't me. And I have to set me free so that I can live again. I have to be true to my heart and trying to make you into him isn't. Please try and understand.

I would never leave if I thought you couldn't stand the pain
A letter in the hall
Is written on the wall
A letter with no words of love at all
Because it's over
And I ain't coming back

I said it didn't matter who else I had but I know you're not stupid. Yes I am going to him. We agreed to be friends but I realized that I didn't want that. He walked away so that I could be with you but I don't want that either. I rang him and we talked, I mean really talked which is something that we should have done ages ago. We also shouted and cried and argued but in the end we realized that we both wanted the same thing. To be together.

And as I close the door
I know I'm breaking your heart
I should have loved you more
Instead I've torn your world apart

I'm sorry it had to come to this. It doesn't give me pleasure that I am hurting you. You are a kind sweet man but you're just not right for me. Somewhere out there is the right woman for you; someone you can sense the moment she is near, who makes the lights dim when she enters a room, someone who loves you completely for everything you are and everything you have done. I am not her. Don't close yourself off from finding her, she is out there for you and you deserve her.

And as I walk through the lonely afternoon
I feel sad enough
I feel bad enough
And all the times when you are lonely where you are
Please don't hate me then
I just could not pretend

Forgive me Riley.

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