He’d had his ups and downs. He’d been the villain. He’d been the hero. He’d lived the life of the pristine privileged, and he’d lived in rancid poverty. He’d been warm, and he’d been outside in the cold. He loved. He’d hated, but he’d always forgiven. He’d made mistakes, and he’d atoned the same. He’d seen the worst people could be, and he’d seen them at their best. He’d known saints, and he’d known criminals. He hadn’t, however, known much joy.

But he’d never encountered someone so committed to being wrong before. Someone so certain that they were above it all while being willfully oblivious to the world. An adherent of removing the toxic who was as toxic as as what was objected to, and who chose those twice as virulent to follow. Someone so convinced of righteousness, when dedicated to pursuing what meant nothing, what reeked of degeneracy, falseness. One so trapped in a world of belligerence that, if he were the sun, they would live in pitch darkness. One who sought the phony dance of masks over truth. Someone so at the mercy of others for self-worth, while also imagining themselves all that mattered. Someone without compassion, without a shred of honesty, without an ounce of self-respect, who would still inflict bile for applause. Someone so greedy, seeking only that in a partner, while declaring others materialistic, who would never understand that an embrace on a cold morning, based in true emotion, was worth more than a million fancy cars. Someone so dedicated to ruining themselves for others’ manipulations. Someone who chose to be ugly and vindictive, cold, pathological, blind. Someone made of pure vanity, though there was nothing there to base it upon. Someone so utterly lost and low, who believed themselves above most. Someone who would never see anything wrong with their world. 

Someone so deprived of anything real, searching for a bigger sham, a phony love. And, in the end, he was glad they never wanted him, a compliment that came in the form of a sneering, shit-talking, lying smile, for he would have had to question his own existence if they had. But his lapse had come at the cost of disillusionment. 

She had ruined the world.