For some, it is the illusion that fuels their life, giving their actions purpose. It doesn’t make a difference if the facts refute the story, if they are at fault as well, as the willful misunderstanding is all that matters, and they cling to it for its own sake, even in a betrayal that calls them depraved.
She knew well what his reasoning was, and why it was. Even when he was lost in despair, ranting and contradicting himself, his plaints and words hyperbolic, she knew that he knew that they had never been together. She was acutely aware of it, as much as he, for reasons she did not want to profess, and she understood how she had caused his pain, though that, the whole story, was something that would never cross her lips either. She chased it from her mind. She knew he loved her, and she basked in it, while rejecting it, torn in heart.
It was, in her conception, more to her advantage to play ignorant and to cast him in the worst light possible, to label him insane. She found it more convenient than to accept, or admit, love of any kind. It was a defense mechanism, and, though she knew her judgments were not fair, and knew he was not what she painted, the very thought of reconciliation, of admitting to her own hyperbole, of dropping the illusion she had conjured and living the truth, sent her fear response into overdrive.
To have taken him would have required her to face all the illusions on which she had built her persona, to know that there had always been another choice from what she had accepted as her role, and that idea scared her so badly that her heart shut down and her mind determined him an enemy. She became a wall.
It was not a normal reaction, by any means. It was a response that could only have come from a torn heart, a heart that did love him, that did desire him, but knew that it would change her world forever to give in. So she killed his soul instead, and her own in the process. And, to deal with that pain, she became cold and let her mind alter her perceptions until he was nothing to her but a monster, a crazy, obsessive man whom she had never wanted anything to do with. And that is the story she told, though her soul knew it was as far from the truth as possible.
Yet, when he saw her, and she plied her glare on him, her mask of uncaring, spite, and distance, she could not hide her eyes. Behind them he could still see the emotion, and, if he had meant nothing to her, they would have drifted from him immediately, as if he did not exist. But they remained locked until she realized she was giving herself away and ran.
But the willful misunderstanding was what mattered to her more than those feelings, the usefulness of the story she had invented, the world in which she’d trapped herself. The truth was that she enjoyed hurting him, the power, knowing of his love and smug with her refusal of it, because she had perverted her former feelings for him into hate, to protect herself, protect her world of illusions. And, so, she had to make him into her enemy, though his love was real and he had not committed any transgression as horrible as those she had let love her, whom she’d forgiven.
She could laugh at his words, twisting them into things he had not said, and ensuring that they did not touch her heart. She could mock his pain, and know her silence encouraged it. She could do that instead of feeling love, laughing with him, and banishing his pain and hers. But her soul died with it and meant her feelings for others could never be real. She could not live a lie and truth at once, and words she spoke of love to them would always be empty. But the truth remained, and had always been in her actions, in her closeness to him that she denied, not her words. That she could never take back, never hide.