Chapter 5: The Fall and the Rise
The weeks after Lina ended things were the darkest of Rami’s young life. Each day felt like a battle against himself—against the gnawing thoughts, the relentless self-loathing, and the unbearable ache of humiliation. He walked through the familiar streets of his small town, past the same old stone buildings and market stalls, but everything felt different now. The world was the same, but he wasn’t.
Each night, lying alone in his room, Rami would replay the moments with Lina over and over again, dissecting every word, every gesture, every mistake he had made. He hated himself for falling so hard, for allowing himself to be swept away by emotions he hadn’t fully understood. The idea of love, which had once seemed so pure and meaningful, now felt tainted—reduced to a cruel game that had left him humiliated and broken.
He would lie awake, staring at the ceiling, torturing himself with thoughts of how things could have been different. Maybe if he had been stronger, if he hadn’t shown his vulnerability, if he had listened to his mind instead of following his heart, he wouldn’t have ended up in this pit of despair. He had broken his own rules—gone against the values he had held so close for so long—and now he was paying the price.
Weeks stretched into months, and Rami’s heart remained raw. He hadn’t been able to fully let go of Lina, even though she was no longer a part of his life. He would catch glimpses of her in the hallways at school, and each time, his chest would tighten painfully, reminding him of how deeply he had fallen, and how low he had allowed himself to sink. She never looked at him with anything but casual indifference now, as if everything they had shared—the conversations, the laughter, the small moments that had meant so much to him—had never really mattered to her.
But as time dragged on, something began to shift inside Rami. The pain was still there, but it started to evolve. At first, it was subtle—a quiet anger, a flicker of resentment that he tried to suppress. He told himself it was wrong to feel that way. After all, it wasn’t Lina’s fault that she didn’t love him back. She had been honest with him from the beginning, hadn’t she? She had told him about her ex, had told him she wasn’t ready for anything new, that her heart belonged elsewhere. But the more he thought about it, the more that flicker of anger grew.
The truth was, Rami had allowed himself to be humiliated. He had let Lina toy with him, even if she hadn’t meant to. He had lowered himself, laid himself bare, and for what? For a girl who had been in love with a man who treated her poorly, who had discarded her and made her feel worthless. Why had he believed that he could somehow fix her, or that he could be the one to take away her pain?
The realization hit him like a punch to the gut. His true pain wasn’t in losing Lina. It wasn’t about not being loved in return. The real agony, the true shame, came from the way he had humiliated himself—how he had lowered his own worth, put his pride and dignity aside, and allowed himself to become nothing more than a doormat. And for what? For someone who didn’t even see him. For someone who didn’t care.
Rami began to resent the person he had been during those months. He despised how desperately he had clung to Lina, even when she had made it clear that her heart belonged to someone else. He hated the way he had allowed her to use him for comfort, knowing deep down that he was never anything more than a temporary emotional crutch. But more than anything, Rami hated himself for not trusting his instincts, for not listening to the voice in his head that had told him to stop, to walk away, to protect himself before it was too late.
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Two years passed, and in those years, Rami changed.
At first, it wasn’t intentional. He simply started pulling away from everything and everyone. He stopped meeting up with his friends as often, stopped going to the cafés where he used to see Lina, stopped allowing himself to linger in places that reminded him of his humiliation. He poured himself into his studies, determined to become something more than the boy who had once humiliated himself over a girl.
