"Some may call it a curse,
A life like mine.
But others- a blessing.
It's certainly a lonely life,
But a fulfilling one at best.
It's my cross to bear,
And I bear it gladly.
Someone has to take a stand against evil-
Why should it not be me?"
- Why Not Me by Within Temptation
If you had asked me four years ago if I was the hero or the villain, I would have answered, deliberately, that I was the hero. If you want my honest opinion, I would tell you that we're always biased towards ourselves. It's why excuses exist, we can't admit that we're ever wrong, ever corrupt, ever slipping in our lives. Mankind is stubborn, self-righteous. We always think we're the hero. We identify ourselves as the protagonist, like in literature. We want to think we're going to win and we want to think that our victory is justifiable.
In a way, we confuse protagonist with hero, because they seem alike in many aspects. Heroes are the people you see in movies, the ones that are fake, the ones that are predictable, the ones that I started not identifying with. Because how could I possibly be like that, I wondered, when I knew that the selfless archetype was not my archetype, and I would not lie to myself and say that I did not feel the burning desire of ambition in my heart.
I never understood some things about heroes, though, especially the hypocrisy. Heroes are motivated by "divine retribution", are they not, and is that not just a fancier way of saying "revenge"? And do heroes not do things out of love? Villains are similar, though, their love might be for the darker aspects of life. It's all a matter of stereotypes, in the long run...
I became a villain when I began to question what all I had believed about myself and the world. So I guess you could say I became a villain a little over a year ago, when revenge just began sounding oh-so-satisfying, when I was tired of the hero losing at everything she tried... When people pushed the little innocent, look-for-good-in-others hero over the edge. Because each wound got salt poured into it, and after awhile, salty wounds get irritable. And before long, it began to fester and burn, eating away at the skin like maggots to a carcass- every sin, every error, everything I should've said but never did. All the silences that ever haunted me, tearing into my soul like ravenous beast, and that was when I began to show little specks of corruption. It wasn't the actions, the decisions I made that led up to this change- it was the mindset, the treasonous thoughts. Murder doesn't make a villain. Thievery doesn't make a villain. It's all in their mind.
And yet, I refuse to think that they are the only dangerous ones, because anyone has the potential to be dangerous in any given situation. Villains are only the ones that accept their flaws, maybe even work with them out of ambition. And when I realized what the heroes were shutting out of their hearts, perhaps I began to hate them as any stereotypical villain would. I hated the ignorance, and yes, even the arrogance, because it stained the air and tainted the earth- disgusting me. And yet, I found such ideals everywhere I turned my head, and I wanted to merely pat the victim of ignorance on the head and tell them that their brain was merely on back-order and would be delivered soon. Because, that was when I realized that knowledge, caution, corruption- yes, that was dangerous. But so was the blaring offensive arrogance that decayed the world's ideals- the one-sided, unopened minds that were so easy to label, turn their noses up in the air, and declare their own purity. But one can even question the accuracy of the purity of arrogance and ignorance. Perhaps the latter could be forgiven, but the former not so easily.
When I became a villain, that was when my mind opened up further than before. I didn't see things as bad- I saw them as an alternate option. Something available, but not necessarily appropriate by most standards. Don't get me wrong- I understood that some things were poisonous to the heart and mind, and were contemptible. Does it mean that I never considered them? No. In fact, I considered many things, appealing towards my darker side, the one that had been oppressed for many years.
But I suppose I had to have a wake-up call eventually, and that wake up call came in the span of a few months, watching the world as it worked and turned around me. Even in the heroes, I saw corruption and the ideals of a villain. I saw people falling from grace to my left and right, and yet they still held their heads high when they ought to have joined their brethren in the shadows of night. I saw blood flow from intangible wounds that they carved into their victims. Hearts broken, faith shattered- and yet the offenders called themselves heroes. And I laughed. Bitterly. Because true villains would never call themselves a hero. They were cut from some other material, a cloth I couldn't identify, but immediately hated. Immediately wanted to destroy.
Some habits die hard, I understand. And perhaps it was the old habit of a hero wanting to save the weak that led me to begin what quest I thought God laid at my feet. Corruption poisoned lives, I understood, and, perhaps from that thought, I understood that similar poison had led me to my darkened mindset as of late. Yes- at that moment, I understood. I understood that I'd been thrown into the perspective of villainy not by self-righteous heroes or merely coincidence, but by something fell and darker than even what things I had contemplated. And I understood, then, that more lives would be poisoned as mine had if life were to continue this way, with no interference. Nothing to destroy the disease. I had to find the vaccine to this problem, I knew. No. No, I had to be the vaccine.
Because there was a handful of evil out there clawing gashes into hearts, hanging faith in the gallows of someone's mind, parading fears before fearful eyes, and walking away from it all. Unscathed. Unmarred.
And someone had to take a stand against it all.
And why should it not have been me?
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