She’s the kind of gentle soul you find sitting alone in a coffee shop absorbed in a book as her latte slowly turns cold. She’s the type of person who will listen to your sob story without judgment and will comfort you with a genuine hug. She is someone who has an enormous capacity for empathy and who readily sheds tears of joy or sorrow as her heart swells at the smallest provocation on her feelings.
But she is also the kind of person who will fan the flames of discontent, feed the fire of disgruntlement. She cannot help it. Oftentimes she doesn’t even realize it as she is doing it. It gives her a kind of giddy, nervous high, that power of being someone’s confidant and the sensation of gaining superior knowledge of a person’s deepest resentments. It’s as if, for those few moments, she is driven by a demon that is normally carefully hidden away in the darkest depths of her being.
Look, the little demon is coming out. You can see it on her face and in her posture. Her color is heightened, a flush is slowly appearing on her cheeks. Her body is alert and slightly fidgety, she is sitting up straight on her chair, her full attention on the friend sitting across from her. He talks of his worries and regrets, and of his umbrage with a mutual friend. She sympathizes with his troubles and drops a comment that fuels his anger towards their friend and brings up memories of past wrongs suffered. She never thought of their friend in such negative terms before but sees where he is coming from and recalls examples of their friend’s undesirable behaviors. She indicates to him, in her non-disagreement with his opinions and invitation to continue in the same vein, that he is not wrong in his feelings and is justified in his resentments. She weaves a careful web of irritation and misery built on a fragile base of intimacy and camaraderie. He finds in her an attentive listener and a sympathetic friend as he unburdens his soul to her.
See that red glint in her eyes? That is the demon growing stronger as it feeds on the agitation that slowly consumes him and that feeds its lust. Another flash of red hot passes her eyes; the demon is getting greedy. She pulls back and comes to herself, subconsciously reigning in the monster. Turning slightly and relaxing into her seat, she releases her friend from this captive torment. They change the subject. Soon they get up to leave, dumping their empty coffee cups in the trash by the door.
If it were not for the love that surrounds her, she might have turned out differently, become someone wholly unrecognizable from who she turned out to be, the flip side of her essence. She has the greatest capacity for love, but also the greatest capacity for destruction.
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