The Scars We Leave

It’s a strange thing, realizing you’re the villain in someone else’s story. Not because you meant to be, not because you plotted their demise or reveled in their tears—but because life happens, and sometimes, despite our best efforts, we mess up. I think the hardest lesson I’ve ever learned is that no matter how careful I try to be, I’ve hurt people. Not in the movie-villain, melodramatic way with evil laughter and a cape, but in those quiet, unexpected ways that still sting—a misplaced word, a choice to leave when someone needed you, a promise you couldn’t keep.

We spend our lives trying so hard to be good, to be the friend that makes people smile, the partner that makes someone feel safe, the child that makes their parents proud. But reality has a way of twisting things. Sometimes, by simply being true to yourself, someone else gets hurt. And then suddenly, you find yourself cast as the bad guy, and you’re left thinking, “How did I end up here? All I wanted was to do the right thing.”

The truth is, you can be the hero in your own life while being the villain in someone else’s. It's the duality that no one warns you about when you're young—that your happiest decisions could be the reason for someone else's tears. It’s a punch to the gut to think that, somewhere out there, there’s someone who wishes they’d never met you. Someone who, if they could, would go back in time and skip over your chapter entirely. And the worst part? You can’t really blame them. Because you remember the hurt you’ve felt, too—the people who’ve left you aching, who probably went on with their lives unaware of the crater they left in yours.

Sometimes, late at night, I wonder if I've been the person someone curses in their moments of loneliness. The one whose name they utter like a sigh, someone who disappointed them when they needed me most. It’s not even intentional; it’s just the way the cards fell. You look back at friendships you let slip, relationships you walked away from, and you wonder: “Did I make the right call, or did I leave someone worse off?” You think about all the versions of you that people carry in their memories, and some of them, inevitably, are going to be ugly.

But at the end of the game, we’re all a bit messy. We’re all just trying to get by, making choices that feel right for us at the moment, only to realize that, oh, maybe that hurt someone else in ways you couldn’t predict. And the hardest part? Accepting that despite your best intentions, you sometimes fail people. The truth is, we’re bound to disappoint, bound to make mistakes that hurt others. No matter how careful we are, we end up being someone's "bad memory" eventually.

I think of the times I thought I was doing the “right” thing, the noble thing—cutting ties when it wasn’t working, being honest about my feelings, trying to protect myself. And still, those choices have consequences. I've broken hearts, ended friendships, let people down. And in my own head, I was just protecting myself, or taking the necessary steps toward growth. But in someone else's head, I’m the one who let them fall, the one who wasn't there. And that hurts. Not because I want to change what I did, but because I hate knowing that I caused someone pain I never intended to.

We love to think of ourselves as protagonists, as fundamentally good people just trying to make our way through life. But part of growing up is realizing that sometimes you’re not the good guy. Sometimes you’re the one who hurts someone, the one who says the wrong thing, the one who leaves. And accepting that is brutal. Accepting that someone might look at me and think, “I wish I'd never met her”—that’s a hard pill to swallow. And yet, there’s a strange freedom in it, too. Because if I can accept that I’m flawed, that I’m going to mess up and hurt people along the way, maybe I can stop expecting myself to be perfect. Maybe I can allow myself to screw up and still believe that I’m worthy of love.

I think about forgiveness a lot. About how much easier it is to forgive others than it is to forgive myself. I think about how much time I spend convincing myself that I’m allowed to mess up, that it’s okay to be a little selfish, to prioritize myself even if it means someone else might feel let down. But forgiving myself is an uphill battle. There’s a part of me that still wants to believe I can be good enough that no one will ever get hurt because of me. But that’s just not how life works. And the more I try to be flawless, the more I end up failing in ways that sting even worse.

The reality is, we are all heroes, villains, and everything in between. You can be someone’s safe place and someone else’s regret, someone’s comfort and someone else’s heartbreak. You can be the best thing that ever happened to one person and the worst thing that happened to another. And that’s okay. We are not just one thing to all people, and trying to be that will leave us exhausted and empty.

So maybe the goal isn’t to be everyone’s hero. Maybe it’s just to be honest, to try, and to forgive yourself when you fall short. Because the truth is, being alive means being flawed. It means hurting people sometimes, even when you don’t want to. It means sometimes being the reason someone feels broken, but it also means being the reason someone feels whole. It means accepting that you can’t control how people see you, or how they remember you, and maybe that’s the hardest part.

In the end, maybe it's enough to try your best, to be the person you hope to be, and to accept that you won’t always get it right. Maybe it’s enough to let yourself be messy, to let yourself be real, and to know that even if you’re not always the hero, you’re still worthy of love.