Always thought I'd kinfirm Ivan instead of Luka- at least, based off the reaction I had to Round 6. But now, I'm realizing it makes sense.
My reaction wasn't just sadness. It was this horrible, twisting, off-putting gut feeling. Like I was watching something so beautiful and so terrible that I could never understand- and it made me sick.
Worst of all? It made me envious. I've always been the self-sacrificing type, so this didn't make sense to me at first, but after thinking about it recently the pieces sort of lined up. As a child (in this life), my sacrifices were out of genuine kindness, but as I grew older and people grew crueler, I started to fantasize about dying for someone. Dying for someone heroically, so that they would remember me as a good person. Selfishly, I wanted to die so that I would be loved. And as the feeling festered in my heart and I slowly began to realize I was generally unlovable and unworthy of respect from most people around me, I detached from reality lost most of my capability to love without a person actively providing me an illusion of happiness. Either they made me happy and I loved them, or they upset me and I yearned for them in a way that felt like hatred.
It wasn't the bullets riddling his skin that made me the most sick when I watched it. It was the love in his eyes. The love that was coursing through his body, with every twitch of his fingers and touch of his hand and kiss on Till's lips, and I watched and I watched and I realized I could not understand it- because I would gladly become a martyr for good, or die a hero, but he. He simply died for love. Nothing more, nothing less- no moral high ground, no honor, no "doing what's right" or "owing it to them", he just loved him.
It made me nauseous. Because in every life I live, I always seem to bear the same curse- I will always be just shy of being human.
And it stings. I loved Hyuna more than myself, yes- but I loved her as my God, I loved her as my savior, I loved her as the one beautiful flower in the miserable existence I lived through day by day. Ivan simply loved. And that was that. No strange complexes, no desperate clinging or desperation. It was the simplicity of it all... so effortlessly human. Ironically, Ivan's emotions were the least shallow, at least to me. Sure, it was not as convoluted and tangled as my relationship with hyuna or mizi's relationship with sua, but that's what made it so pure.
And I, who was destroyed and rebuilt and tainted and exploited over and over again, could not fathom something so pure. But I could recognize its' beauty. And I could know it would never be mine to feel.
