The Radical

“The fact that you have an opinion doesn't automatically give you the right to shove it down people's throats. Have you ever considered that you're wrong?”

These words went in one ear and out of the other, as the angry man wallowed in his pit. Sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor, his girlfriend towered over him, frustration lining her young face.

“You can't honestly think that you're better than anyone else?”

His stubborn eyes scanned over his possessions. He wasn't going to dignify that question.

“You do! What gives you that idea, huh?”

“People are stupid.”

“And you're so clever?”

“I am, actually.”

“So what if you are? What have you ever done with your life? Collected your stupid shit and made your pointless plans to save yourself and the planet... And what does it always come to? You sitting back there, sad and alone.”

“I'm not sad.”

"As if angry is any better. You take pride in your rage, and it's pathetic,” her voice cracked, and she slumped against the wall. “I can't take this anymore. You drain me.”

He bit his lip. This again.

“I don't know what to do anymore, y'know.”

Every time someone grew close to him, he'd driven them away.

“You're not doing anything with your life.”

They'd say the same things.

“You think you're so important, but you're not.”

Their feelings would always die right in front of him.

“You're nothing. And you know what's worse?”

He would just watch as his lovers fell apart, one-by-one, in the same way. He couldn't even bring himself to answer anymore.

“What's worse is that you know it! You know you're worthless.”

It hurt when they were right.

“You know that you're going to be sat there, in the same shit, until you're an old man.”

Who was he kidding, it always hurt, whether someone was saying it or not.

“Your plans are shit. All you talk is shit. Every plan you've ever made was too big and outlandish to ever work... Not that you ever started any of them!”

He wanted to defend himself, but he had no legs to stand on.

“Have you ever thought about how you would sustain a long-term relationship? It's like you're not even here half of the time, even though you never leave this room!”

“I thought we were okay.”

“You liar.”

He couldn't retort – she was right again.

“No-one could possibly think was alright. You're an over-opinionated, under-achieving, low life, with no ambition and no direction in life. You have a perfectly good girlfriend, willing to love you, and you'd rather pine over the way things could be?”

He pursed his lips again, clenching his fists, waiting for the next part to come. The final act. His heart was pounding, even though he'd been through this a hundred times. He didn't even know if he cared.

“I'm so done with you.”

Here it comes.

“I hate so much about you, and you don't even care.”

He thought about it. Nope. He didn't care that she hated him.

“Do you even care that I love you too?”

Something in his chest tightened. That, he did care about. Why had it taken him so long to realise? Too late again, he guessed.

“Note that I said that in the present tense?”

He looked up properly for the first time. Gazing through his lashes, he looked and felt like a little boy being told off by his mother.

“I still love you, you dick. You're the biggest idiot I know, and if you don't sort your life out soon, I'm going to have to rethink this, but for now, I'm staying. I know you thought I was going to leave you today, because you have a special kind of pathetic for when you're going to lose something, but I'm not giving up that easy. I love you, and I don't say that lightly. Just don't mess with me. I'll tear your heart out if you don't sort your shit out.”

He just stared, open mouthed, at the woman before him. His whole world had been shaken, but he'd always been set in the same old ways. His heart raced at the conflict bubbling up inside him. He had a lot of thinking to do, if he was actually going to make a difference in his own life for once...