Rigel: Fallen Star

My Realization

01.11.2022

For a long time, I believed your place in my night sky was permanent.
I never actually knew what the criteria was for staying in the pedestal of my sky.

Until now, that is.

I finally figured out why I grew to adore you so much.
When I first met you, you had grasped the perfect understanding of being human.
You understood that you, along with everyone else, had flaws.
You understood that there were reasons behind a person's actions, regardless of good or bad.
Most importantly, you held your humility.
You listened to the people around you,
Paying close attention to all sides of the story,
And guiding others as they try to understand their differences.

Back then, I believed that you saw yourself as an equal to the rest of the world.

And that was how you ended up in my night sky.

For the first time in my life, I thought I finally met another person who understood the patterns behind the scenes.
I thought you were somebody who knew exactly what was wrong with the world and despised it as much as I did.
I thought that there was finally going to be someone I could fight alongside,
Us against the entitled nature of the world,
And all this time, I thought I finally had someone who would maintain the flickering selflessness within me by taking over and allowing me to rest even for a little while.

All these months, I thought that you would be the person I grow up with.

Until somewhere along the way, I lost you.

I couldn't blame you.
You were hurt by your surroundings.
You were hurt by people who struggled and refused to understand you.
You were hurt by experience.
It was a reasonable response.

And no matter how much you wanted to fight the battle on your own,
You couldn't.

So I stood by you,
Defending you to people who had known and memorized you since the day you stepped into the school,
All in an oblivious hope that I could somehow mend your heart and help you reignite the star I had fallen so deeply for.

But the star never came back.
Rigel never came back.

I don't know how much you've healed from the experience,
But the scars in your heart have gone permanent.

There's only one thing that you need to know now, and it's that you've changed.
You've grown to crave the adoration and service of the ones willing to pursue you.
You've gotten attached the mere idea of being happily in love.

You've grown to despise the majority, unaware that you are mimicking the same behavior you've grown to despise.
You've stopped listening to the other side of the story and jump into conclusions based on what had hurt you.
You discard others for standing alongside the majority for protection,
Not even stopping to think that maybe they kept their distance for the sake of protecting YOU.

Your suffering has made you blind to the world around you.

And the fact that I couldn't accept these changes just proves one thing:
My love for you was conditional.
It wasn't the fairytale adoration that you wanted or that the world was so easy to slip into.

It was a rational love.
I had every good reason to fall in love with you until the day I lost you.
And I have every good reason to say this now.
Because for a long time, I thought I was one of the only ones who fully understood you.
I thought that the secrets I kept quiet about had mattered.

But now, it seems like I've become nothing but a stranger to you,
A dramatic parrot you bought out of interest and may have grown to regret ever since.
Notice how neither of us can open up or cry to each other anymore?
That's the thing.
We don't know each other anymore.

And in the same way, you have every good reason to despise me for not accepting who you are today.
This whole time, you thought I would accept you wholeheartedly.
And trust me, I thought the same.
I thought I had what it takes to love you, even if I had to hurt in silence for those four months.
But after seeing the damage that has been done to me and to the people I care about- even to yourself,
I realized I've had enough.

I've stopped clinging to the hope that I could bring Rigel back.

Seeing where I stand in your life now, I know that I can't save Rigel.
I can't change you, I can't heal you.
I can't do anything.
Right now, it's all up to you to save him.
That is, if you still want to.
You can only pray that the people you chose will help you return to the best version of yourself,
But the change is up to you.

If you want to keep your current self, I'm willing to respect that.
I'll continue to be there as your guardian angel- your last resort.
But I'll only be there when you need me.
Never when you want me, should you ever want me to be anywhere with you.
So don't expect me to be there several years into the future, on the day you succeed,
Because by then, my job is done.
It's over.

When that day comes, let me go.
Because no matter how much I still love you,
I'm not going to follow you into the path that hurt the people I cared about.
I'm not going to give in to the influence of the world.
I still want to pursue my morals and humility.
And I will do everything in my power to preserve it,
Even if the pain destroys every piece of me in silence.

When that day comes, let me go.
And may that be the last good thing you ever do for me.