WANTED to care about me!"
"For the love of..." Ex-Best Friend threw up his arms, frustrated. "That's the point we're trying to make! You wouldn't let us SEE the real you and even give us a chance!"
The young man bowed his head towards the ground.
"Just leave me alone. All of you."
"Really?" Someone else said, advancing from the audience. "That's all you're going to say? When all these people have shown up because they actually care about you? That's all you're going to do? Push them all away again?"
"HOW am I supposed to believe any of you care? Especially YOU. You walked away when my face started to crumble! I saw the look of disgust on your face!"
Silence from him. A bunch of people began to surround him. All the people from his former recent group.
He tensed up. His hand gripped the dagger defensively. If any of these people tried to get close, so help him God...
"Look again." his Former Friend from the group said.
Everything began to fade out as they went again into one final vision.
Christian began to open up about everything. Once he started, he wasn't able to stop. He kept his head looking towards the ground the whole time. He tried not make eye contact with the others, though he occasionally found himself subconsciously glancing up and doing so, anyways.
Jack kept gently asking more and more detailed questions, and at this point, there was nothing Christian wasn't answering completely honestly.
It felt good to talk, actually. It was like a dam had opened up in his soul and everything was flowing out at once.
Several times he felt like crying, but was trying very hard to hold onto his emotions. He didn't want to embarrass himself in front of them, but as the same time he had a strong desire to just let go completely.
(23)
He was watching the scene again with the group. His face melting, some of them getting up and walking away.
"Tell me." his Former Friend said to him. "What in particular do you notice about this scene?"
"Everyone's leaving me."
"Everyone? Watch again."
After he had spent some time sobbing on the ground, he watched as an angry look that took over his face.
Slowly he got up and began to walk away. Some of the others that had remained looked surprised, and began calling out for him to stay.
He paid them no heed. He walked away, pulling his dagger out and beginning to cut along his arms so gently...
The vision began to fade.
Christian lost it. The face he had worn in front of others for so long had finally been broken down. This was the real him. He had tried for so long to project an image of himself, one of someone who had it all together, one who had a promising future ahead of him, who refused to let anything get in his way or bring him down...
But here was the real person now. Hurt. Alone. Vulnerable.
He could act like he was on top of the world when he was out in public, but the truth was, he was stuck in a pit. An endless nightmare from which he constantly felt he would never escape.
He felt embarrassed of the way he was acting right now, but at the same time, a great sense of relief started to wash over him. He hadn't realized until this very moment just what a great deal of pressure he had put on himself. The pressure was gone. Right now, for the first time in his life, it was just him, the real him, and these people...
They didn't leave him alone like he expected everyone to when he showed his true face. Emily put her arm around him and pulled him into a hug, and they sat there with him the whole time until he was done.
(24)
"Once again, you chose to leave everyone behind." his Former Friend said.
"Not everyone left you. Some stuck by your side. But you turned right around and pushed them away."
The young man couldn't think of a counter argument for this.
"But why did YOU and some of the others leave me?"
"People come and go out of our lives for different reasons. Sometimes people just change and have nothing more in common with each other. Other times," he said, looking the young man in the eyes and adding a greater emphasis on his words. "You're going down such a self-destructive path and you won't receive anything anyone else says to try and help you, so people give up and leave because they just can't bear to watch anymore."
"When I was down in that pit, a voice kept saying to me that there was something different about me, something that caused other people to naturally hate me. It said that everyone is really evil, and would only intend harm for me."
"Are you talking about that?" his Former Friend said, pointing behind the young man.
Slowly, he turned to look in the direction the man was pointing.
He nearly recoiled in shock. It was sitting there, on top of where the pit had been.
It was too hard to describe in words exactly what it was. It was tall, all black, with an utterly grotesque form. Maggots crawled all over its body and face. But the thing which struck him most were the eyes. Two red eyes gazed out from the mass upon him.
He could feel the intense hatred and malice coming from them. Directed at him. No, not just him. At all of humanity.
This sweet talking being that had taught him the ways of the world and claimed to be on his side the whole time... no, this was not a creature who had his best intentions or the best intentions of any living thing in mind.
"Is that what you were listening to?" his Former Friend asked. "I hardly think the advice coming from something like that is something worth listening to, don't you agree?"
The young man turned back towards his former friend.
"So, everything I believed was lie?"
"You had some people hurt you in the past. I'm not going to lie, people are going to try and hurt you again. You tried to take it to the extreme and assume everyone was like that. You shut yourself out from everyone, and denied everyone the chance to get to know you, the beautiful person you truly are on the inside."
He couldn't believe someone had referred to him with such words.
"Do you want some real truth? A lot of the people who hurt you are hurting themselves. Did you not want to hurt others because others hurt you? It's really all the same. Nothing ever changes about human nature. The way to live is not to push away or hate others. It's about love and forgiveness in spite of what others would do to you. Things like that..." he said, pointing in the direction of the demon. "...would try to convince you that the path in life is take whatever happiness you can get and strike back at those who curse you. But what does it profit your soul if you strike back and hurt others who are already hurting, perhaps just as much as you, because it gives you a sense of feeling better? At some point, someone has to break the cycle."
The young man stared at the ground. He found his former friend's words making more sense than those of the demon. How could he have been so blind? Had he really been living his entire life under a delusion of rejection from and hatred towards people, feelings that ought to have never been given heed to in the first place?
Yet another young man came forward from the audience.
"There's a lot of people in the world who would like to give you a chance."
He got closer than any of the others had dared to attempt before. He grabbed the young man's arm. The one that held the dagger.
"Put it down. You don't need to fight anymore. Give it up. Let everyone in."
The young man stared into his eyes for several seconds. Slowly, he felt his hand began to weaken. The dagger began to slip from his hand, slowly, then he fully released his grasp and it fell down and struck the ground with a clatter. His friend grabbed him and pulled him into a hug, and everyone who had been standing around in the audience suddenly rushed forward and surrounded him.
Not to throw him back in the pit. Someone had finally come to his rescue.
Surprisingly, the only thing he had needed to do was let them. He suddenly realized he'd always had more friends than he'd ever realized he had.
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The fog began to rapidly dissipate. The rocky ground began to fade and turned into a beautiful field of grass and flowers. As the fog began to completely disappear, the true form of the area surrounding them began to appear. It was a beautiful garden...
Christian had been living his whole life selfishly. He had been striving all his life for something he already had. He had felt that if he became famous, people would come to love and care about him.
He felt he had to do something in order to be loved, but had he ever tried to love others in return? Always responding in anger, even going as far as to ruin someone else's life to make him feel better following some sort of twisted philosophy.
Never reaching out to others, never trying to be a friend to others, always being self-absorbed, not valuing the blessings he had and could have had in his life.
These people who were here, in his life right now, were just one of many opportunities that had come and he had let pass him by. He knew right then and there that he was never going to let them pass him by again.
If someone ever hurt him again, he was not going to let it have the same power over him as before.
He thought of Janice and felt a great guilt inside. Never would he do something like that to anyone ever again.
(Epilogue)
Christian returned to the Art League. It took awhile to undo some of the damage he had done. He and Tristan eventually reconnected. Christian was shocked when he found out that Tristan had been almost as upset as he had been when their friendship had ended. He resolved that he needed to
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