The bad guy

^{[Recommended reading music: Schumann – Träumerei, from Kinderszenen No. 7]}

…

“Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?” he asked. His voice was devoid of hope. His heart was already broken. It was not the first time he asked, but she knew he would not ask again.

“I’m not…” she started. But he could not bear to hear it again. He turned around and left, dazed and broken. That was the last time she saw him.

She chose to be the bad guy of his story. The bad guy gets a free pass for being hated and forgotten. And she hoped with all her heart to be forgotten. She wished he would come to hate her so much that the anger would someday bring him strength.

…

She was a loner who used to see the world in absolutes. It was black or white, compassion or indifference, love or hate. And one day, unexpectedly, she found herself deep inside a love story with her best friend. A connection that grew slowly, nurtured by them both. But the story did not end with a happily ever after. Fictions end when writers stop daydreaming, but life only ends with death.

With time, she understood herself better. She learned more about life and discovered her heart. Her old persona started feeling like an act – fake. She desperately wanted to but failed to explain it to him. She felt like a broken record repeating words he did not understand. She was not the person he thought he knew, nor the girl of his dreams. And he was not the one her heart sought.

Friendships cannot always turn into love. And young love is more fragile than one would believe. More so when you are coming of age and have yet to find yourself. They were young and naïve. Arguments got brushed aside before they started. The spark in her eyes faded away. One day she stopped believing the words she told him. She did not understand him anymore, and he did not understand her. No one was at fault. Life is hard to figure out when it is your first time living.

But she used to see the world in absolutes. Her promises held her back for far too long. She had given her word to love him forever. And her words could never be broken. That would make her a bad person in her own eyes. She believed in the truth of the words she had whispered to him in the past. They had once come from her soul. They had not been lies.

Years passed by. She kept believing those words until she stopped believing them. And she kept her promises until she broke all of them.

He never saw it coming and it hit him hard. She walked away from his story, never looking back at the destruction left in her wake. Being the bad guy felt right. It was the choice that finally set her free.