The Storm

What happens when you realize you are the dark storm in someone else’s life?

The person that forced them to overcome floods and destruction. You wonder in what state you left their life. In pieces? Or are they whole, healing, strengthening their powers against your dark forces?

When you realize you’re the antagonist in someone else’s story, darkness falls hard on your life. The irony is that you believed you were good. You believed they were your enemy, antagonist, archnemesis.

You believed yourself the hero.

Sacrificing yourself for the greater good.

Just wait until you learn the truth.

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Her hair sweeps back over her shoulders as she enters the small two-bedroom apartment, shopping bags in tow.

She always shops at the most inappropriate times.

I sit with my legs tucked up under me on the couch, partway into the seventh episode I’m binging for the day. The annoyance creeps in low in my stomach but I keep my gaze neutral.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Shopping bags carted to her room. Volume up one more notch on the TV.

It has been like this for at least a month. Little conversation. A marathon of pretending that things are okay. We keep separate lives, only converging when absolutely necessary. Enemies until we are in the same room and have to pretend to be friends.

I turn to the TV again, stomach knotting. I have to force a breath in to calm myself. This is what makes you stronger, right?

#

I often dreamed what it would be like if I could read minds. If I could know what people truly thought of me. Would some hate me as much as I thought? Resent me?

Does she resent me?

#

The light is shining from her room and not for the first time, I feel myself getting angry. I’m up late trying to finish the work my boss continually piles on me, the clock shining 2:43am. My arms prickle as I realize she is likely putting the finishing touches on her novel, success flying out of her fingertips, her whole body buzzing on adrenaline from reaching the end.

That should be my success.

We went to the same college, studied the same major, dreamt the same goals. That was what initially brought us together. We were both riding a fantasy of successful authorship, of bringing the next great novel to our peers’ bookshelves.

We would stay up late into the night, sometimes sharing our favorite books, sometimes sitting in silence, writing our own stories. We would naturally alternate thinking and typing, one person’s keys clacking creating the white noise for the other’s thoughts.

In class, we’d share our stories, proudly applauding after the other read aloud. Smiling broadly as the other students praised our work. I felt a surge of pride when the professor called her up to share more, suggested she submit her work to a competition. Deemed her talent her “superpower.”

But those same words never came for me.

She apologized over and over but I just smiled, encouraged her to submit. Felt the ugliness begin to grow in the pit of my stomach.

I told myself I would get the next one. That I would work harder. That the competition was good for me. But months and then years passed and her success only multiplied while mine faltered. The darkness within me grew until I could only see her as my enemy, as my competition. As the reason I was not reaching the success I wanted.

It’s easy when your enemies are distant figments of your mind. It’s a whole other thing when you can see their light shining just one room over, stifling any brightness you’re trying to muster for yourself.

#

The next day, she walks in on my current binge session and tells me she’s done. She can’t live here anymore. The stress and drama and discomfort are too much for her. She can’t write in this environment.

I want to yell, But you’re the problem!

But I just sit there. The TV continues to babble in the background but I don’t register the show. A mix of anger, frustration and regret bubble to the surface, but I just nod. Say, okay. Say, Be out by the weekend.

Those are the only words we exchange and she leaves Saturday quietly, taking the few suitcases of clothing and the computer she owns. On Sunday, I begin to rearrange the leftover furniture for the hell of it, trying to drown out the anger and despair fighting inside me.

#

What happens when you realize you are the dark storm in someone else’s life? What about when you realize you’re the dark storm in your own?

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For the next year, I battle with alternating thoughts of hate and longing for a friend turned enemy. I struggle to piece together where things went wrong. I try not to acknowledge what I know down deep.

My pen scratches along the thinly lined notebook paper in my lap, attempt number seventy for the day at writing something halfway decent. I promised myself I would work on writing, work on bettering my craft, work toward that success that was so deftly swept out from under me.

Show her that I am capable.

I will finally beat the nemesis that keeps knocking at the back of my mind.

#

Even with all my dreams of mind reading, I eventually realize that I refuse to even read my own. Refuse to let my guard down and process the darkest of my thoughts.

I am not the hero. I am the nemesis.

#

What happens when you realize you are the dark storm in someone else’s life? What about when you realize, years down the line, that you are no longer anything to them at all?

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I run into her six years later at a bar. She has an attractive, six-foot-something guy on her arm and they’re bent in happy conversation over a pair of whiskeys. She turns and catches me in her sight before I can gracefully exit, causing my heart to slam against my chest. This is probably their celebration evening. She just published her latest novel, something angsty and coming-of-age.

I had thought about this moment constantly for the past six years. What would I do if I saw her again? Would the jealousy return? Would she morph again into the enemy I created?

Her eyes widen slightly, but she appraises me for only another second before turning back to her date. I realize suddenly that the anger and hurt and need to even the score that I had felt all these years is not reflected back in her at all.

She has moved on.

I exit the bar as a wave of regret passes over me. I’ve built her into this opposing character all these years, certain there would be conflict when we met again. That we would battle it out, the protagonist of my story versus my archnemesis. I would finally best her.

But when the time came, it was only me that felt the need to finish the fight, tie up loose ends.

#

When I return home, I flip open my laptop and begin to write.

What happens when you realize you are the dark storm in someone else’s life? When all the energy you’ve put into fighting what you perceive as your enemy is actually dragging you both down into stormy waters? How do you begin to reconcile the destruction you’ve created?

Somehow this truth finally came to me: We are all heroes and villains. In our lives, we straddle the line between the two, sometimes passing to one end and sometimes falling full-force into the other.

We can’t blame ourselves for sometimes being the villain. Circumstances, perceptions, people, places. They all drive us to the darker side.

What makes us the hero is how we respond. How we work to fix what we damage. How we reevaluate who we are and how we see the world. How we see ourselves.

What makes us the hero is the capacity to forgive.