The Seven Sins—Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath, Pride, Lust, and Greed—also apply to teenage conduct. And they’re seven reasons why he had to go along and break my heart.
“Alina,” he said. “Don’t you get it? I loved the way you are. You don’t have to go around pretending to be someone you aren’t.” I looked down at my brightly painted toe nails and played with the huge hoop earrings dangling from my face. “I mean, you were perfect, until you weren’t yourself. I hated that you always thought I was going after other girls. Why couldn’t you accept that I only loved you? You didn’t have to be jealous all the time.” The sad thing about his accusation was that it was true. I was never satisfied with all of the “I love you’s” or the “you’re perfect’s.” I was always changing myself, to be anyone he talked to, anyone but me.
He looked at the paper he was holding in his hands. They were steady, not even trembling. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. “Okay, so sloth. You always put things off to the last minute. When I want to go to the movies with you, or when I want to hold you in my arms, you don’t. And it made me feel unwanted, like you didn’t need me to happy.” I reflected back on all the times I had made up lies just to avoid him. I didn’t mean it, of course. But sometimes, I just wanted to be alone to think, and I thought he of all people would understand. Guess not.
“You may think this contradicts with what I just said, but it doesn’t. My next point is that you’re never satisfied. You always want more, and when you can’t have it, you throw a fit. Really. Whenever I was around you, I always felt like I couldn’t give you what you wanted, and it hurt. A lot.” By now, I began to wonder why I was always the bad guy. Why I was always at fault. Everyone has flaws, and right now, it seems like he is laminating mine and looking past his own. Nobody’s perfect. Why doesn’t he understand that?
By this time, I had accepted the fact that he no longer wanted me. I felt the fury boiling up inside of me because he was just making me seem the villain. I started to open my mouth to cut him off when he said, “Number four: wrath.” Well, that shut me up right away. “Again, nothing I ever do satisfies you. And I try. Trust me, I try to please you as much as I try to survive. But it just doesn’t work. When you don’t get what you want, you just blow up. You lose your head over everything and start yelling at me. You don’t know how much I want for you to just accept me for me.
“You know Alina, you’re an independent woman, and I appreciate that. But your pride. Your pride just makes everything great about you seem…less great. You can never admit that you’re wrong; because to you, you’re always right. Even when you’re not. I need a woman who will be right nine out of ten times, but that one time, she’ll be able to admit it. And you know what, that’s not you. It never was you. You need to look at how your pride reflects off of other people. How they will look at you because of it. How I’ll look at you because of it.”
“Sometimes, I feel like you never really loved me. I just feel like you used me, as an object. Not in a sexual way of course. But I feel like you used me for…just for someone. When you needed me, I was there. When you didn’t, I was still there. But when you didn’t want me, you just pretended I wasn’t. You were so manipulating. I tried to make you love me, because I loved you. But when I think about it all over again, I was wrong. I was wrong to fall for you, because all you did was use me for your pleasure, for your comfort, for your disposal. And I know why you started to act like you wanted to drop me too. You didn’t want it to happen to you, so you did it to me first. Cruel, unbelievable.” He shook his head at me in mock disappointment, and I wanted to scream.
“Greed. I don’t know about this one. Well, scratch that. I do know. But it’s the last one, and I’m going to leave you to think about it all by yourself. All alone. That’s what you get for acting the way you did to me. It was harsh and unjust. And this is your punishment: solitude to think about your wrongdoings in your own lonely way.” He shook his head again. “You know, I used to hate you for doing this to me. For going and breaking my heart, making me look like a fool. But I’m done hating now. I’m done.” With that said, he reached into his bag and brought out a Bible. “If you keep sinning and breaking apart hearts, you’re going to serve the punishments in hell. Better read up now.”
And he left me standing there. He left as a whole, and me as a piece. Because in the end, it wasn’t me who sinned. It was him. Everyone has their mistakes and their flaws. His flaw, one among many others, was that he could not look past mine, but instead enlarged them to make it seem as if he was the pure one. Silly boy. It was him who broke my heart, it was him who was going to hell. But who’s the broken one standing in a broken puddle of tears with a Bible hanging limply from her broken hands? That’s right. Me.