Almost There, But Not!

Isabella is the last choice. Not the first flame. Not the favourite. She’s the fall-back. The echo. The soft landing when better options vanish. Even the Devil only visits when others don’t answer.

He wears many faces. Not just lovers. Friends turned foes. Doctors who speak in riddles and silence. Systems that smile with empty hands. Governments that file her under too hard. He is all of them. He is the pattern. He is the rhythm of being almost enough.

She remembers the moment her body betrayed her. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. A curse. A sentence. A transformation. Suddenly, she was no longer a person. She was a burden. A complication. A thing that required measurement, precision, foresight, and patience. And patience is a currency most people don’t carry.

They treat her like she’s contagious. Like her blood flows heavy with something they might catch. They flinch at her pain — not because they feel it, but because it reminds them comfort is fragile. That bodies break. That love has limits. She sees it in the way their eyes dart away, in the way conversations shift to safer ground, in the way they offer help that never arrives.

She sits in the cold. Four degrees. No heat. No comfort. Just the ache of being forgotten. The air tastes metallic, like the inside of a coin. Her breath hangs in front of her, a ghost that disappears before it can touch anything. The floorboards are so cold they feel wet under her feet. Her fingers ache, stiff and slow, as if the cold has crept inside her bones to stay. She feels outside — exactly how they’ve made her insides feel: cold, alone, worthless, empty, without purpose.

She is the weed in the garden bed of uniformed flowers. Not even picked to be thrown away. Just left to wilt. To die in felt isolation. Watching others bloom brightly. She imagines the soil around her roots — dry, cracked, starved of water — while the flowers beside her drink freely. She wonders if they notice her at all, or if she’s just part of the scenery they’ve learned to ignore. Sometimes she thinks the wind notices her more than they do, brushing against her leaves like a passing stranger who doesn’t stop.

She used to be chosen. Sometimes. Briefly. When it was easy. When she was convenient. When her pain was still invisible. She remembers the rush of being wanted, the way her name sounded when it was called first. She remembers the warmth of hands that reached for her without hesitation. Those moments are fossils now — proof that she existed in another form. She turns them over in her mind like smooth stones, worn down by time, their edges dulled but their weight still real.

Now, she is the hindrance. The drain. The one who takes more than she gives. Not because she wants to. But because survival costs more now. Because every step is a calculation. Every outing a risk. Every smile a performance. She times her movements like a chess player, always thinking three moves ahead, always aware of the cost of a wrong step. She has learned to ration her energy the way others ration money, spending it only where it might matter, hoarding what little she has for the days she knows will hurt more.

She remembers love — the kind that felt like warmth. Before it burned. Before it vanished. Before it turned into faceless strangers and unread messages. She remembers friendship — the kind that promised forever. Until forever became inconvenient. She remembers being seen — not as a problem, but as a person. She remembers laughter that didn’t feel borrowed, conversations that didn’t feel like transactions.

Now, she is the lesson people don’t want to learn. The mirror they avoid. The truth they bury beneath platitudes and pity. She is tired. Not just in her bones. But in her soul. Tired of being second best. Tired of being the afterthought. Tired of being remembered only when the lights go out. Tired of the way people say they care but never show up when it matters.

She doesn’t want to be worshipped. She doesn’t want to be saved. She just wants to be chosen. First. Fully. Without condition.

But the Devil doesn’t choose her for love. He chooses her for convenience. For comfort. For the ache he knows she’ll swallow. He arrives with sweet words. Backhanded compliments. Promises dipped in sugar. Lies that glide down her throat like honey. And she drinks them — because sometimes, even poison feels like warmth.

She knows the pattern. She’s studied it. She’s danced to it. She’s bled for it. And still, she craves it. Not because she’s weak. But because she’s fluent in the language of survival. Because second best is still a place. Still a role. Still a rhythm.

The Devil has become her keeper. Not a man. Not a myth. But a system stitched from seductive lovers, failed friendships, and policies that grin with teeth too sharp to trust. He wears uniforms. He wears pity. He wears the sloth‑shaped shadow of humanity’s indifference. He wears the masks of stigma and judgment, of friends who turn foe, proving that conditions are for everyone and everything. He dresses in policies and procedures, soothes the imaginary lines of man‑made importance, and decides which voices are right and which are wrong. He soaks in a silence that had room for those who could have spoken — if only they had. He is the power people made him when they chose comfort over courage. Now he sits on her shoulder, whispers in her ear, and lures her soul into despair.

She has seen him in waiting rooms, in the way receptionists avoid her eyes. She has heard him in the pause before someone says no. She has felt him in the weight of forms that ask the same questions over and over, as if the repetition might erase her. He is in the friend who doesn’t return calls, in the lover who says they can’t handle it, in the stranger who stares too long at her pain. He is in the way people talk about her as if she isn’t in the room, in the way they lower their voices when they think she can’t hear.

It is a language she was forced to learn to survive. It is the creation made out of wreckage that will one day build her escape — not into light, but into something of her own making. She has lived in the over‑interpretation of every misstep, in the starvation of emotion, in a terrain made entirely of ache. Life has been stripped of depth, effort, and presence — replaced with surface layers, shrinking, and itchy feet from lack of grounding. The lines between trust and the inner knowledge of already knowing have blurred. Her life is layered now in caution, in the refusal to invest too soon in anything that calls itself love.

Still, she longs for alignment — to see, to feel, to be held with fullness. For a whisper that says: you are not too much; you are exactly enough. She imagines what it would be like to wake without bracing for the day. To walk into a room and know she belongs there. To be chosen without having to earn it, without having to bleed for it. She imagines a life where her worth is not measured in what she can endure, but in what she already is.

She remains sunk in soil, tangled in roots, in the isolation. The seasons change around her, but the cold lingers. Rain falls, but it never seems to reach her. She wonders if she will ever bloom again, or if she is destined to remain here — a weed in a garden that never wanted her. And yet, somewhere deep in the roots, there is still a pulse. Still a stubborn thread of green that refuses to die, even when no one is watching.

Isabella was the last choice. Now, she is her only choice. And that is

not a victory. It is not a miracle. It is simply the truth of survival.