Loving You Made Me Cruel

I don’t know if you can hear me. Perhaps that is the only reason I can finally say this. Perhaps I needed the silence. The distance. The space between us where your magic cannot reach for mine and pull it closer. Where I can hear my own heartbeat without wondering if it is mine… or something you left behind.

I used to believe that healing was the purest thing a soul could offer. I believed every wound carried a story. Every scar was proof that someone had survived something they thought would destroy them. I believed no pain was too ugly to touch, no darkness too deep to reach into.

My magic answered that belief. It came from mercy. From kindness. From the small, quiet part of me that always wanted to mend what the world had broken.

They called me the kingdom’s greatest healer. They said my hands carried sunlight. They said I could pull sickness from bone, grief from hearts, poison from the blood. They said my magic was beyond beautiful because it asked for nothing in return.

I believed them.

Until I met you. And I need you to understand something before I say things that will hurt. I do not hate you. I have tried. With every bone in me I have tried. I have searched every corner of myself for anger. I have begged my heart to give me something sharp enough to cut through this love. I thought that if I could hate you, if I could convince myself, you were something cruel and unforgivable, then perhaps I could finally let you go.

But my heart refuses to make you a villain. This is the wound I cannot escape.

You were never the darkness I was warned about. You were the warmth hidden inside a storm. You were a hand reaching through shadows. A voice that made me feel seen when the whole world only saw my magic. You were the first mage I had ever loved. The first soul from the Dark Kingdom. The Shadow Kingdom. To look at me without seeing a miracle to be worshipped or a healer to be used. You simply saw me. I think that is why I mistook feeling understood for feeling safe.

You came from a kingdom where power was never given freely. Where magic was fed by hunger, desire, the things people were ashamed to admit they wanted.

Your magic was different from mine. Mine healed. Yours consumed. And I should have been afraid of that. I should have known that the fire does not become harmless because you love the warmth.

But I loved you. And love has a way of making beautiful things feel like they cannot possibly destroy you. At first, I thought the change was impossible to notice. A little more exhaustion after healing. A little less patience. A little more anger when someone else needed me. I told myself it was because I was tired. I had given too much. Even healers break.

But deep down, I knew. I knew the moment my magic hesitated. I knew the moment someone reached for my help, and instead of feeling compassion, I felt irritation. I knew the moment I looked at a wounded stranger and wondered if they deserved my gift.

There was a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than seven. Her mother carried her through the temple doors with blood soaking through the blanket wrapped tightly around her. She was crying so hard she could barely speak. I remember looking at them… and wishing they had gone to someone else. I looked at them and debated whether that little girl deserved my magic. I watched her mother beg, and all I could think was how tired I was. How much of myself I would have to give away to save her. I let her plead and beg. Until I couldn’t, I healed her. Her little hand reached for mine afterwards, and she smiled as though I had hung the stars above her.

No one ever knew that I had almost chosen not to. That if there weren’t multiple eyes staring at me, I might have chosen not to. That is the memory that now wakes me in the night. The woman I used to be before you would never have hesitated.

Do you understand what that did to me? Do you understand what it means to spend your entire life believing your purpose is kindness, only to wake one morning and find cruelty growing quietly in the places where kindness used to live?

I became afraid of myself. Not because I could lose my power or my magic was changing. I was afraid because a part of me liked it. The feeling of being powerful enough to decide who was worthy of saving. I liked the certainty. The way your magic whispered that I did not have to keep bleeding myself dry for everyone else. That I did not have to carry every stranger’s pain. That I did not have to be endlessly gentle in a world that had never been gentle with me. You made me feel allowed to want. And I hate that I loved that. I hate that when your magic touched mine, some hidden part of me reached back.