The Storm of Alone
Lila's Point of View
Victor Sullivan was a man who filled every room he entered. He didn’t need to raise his voice or pound his fists; his presence alone did the job. It was larger than life itself. To the world, he was charming and self-assured, the kind of man who could make you feel like you were the only person in the room—until he decided you weren’t worth his time anymore. I had once been that person. The one he focused on, the one he seemed to value above all others.
And for years, I convinced myself it meant something. Which was why I practically gave up everything of myself as a person, almost the entirety of my sanity in the end, to please and keep him happy. I felt he was worth that and the damage I could feel under the surface, trauma from his past, meant I could love him and forgive just about all of it.
But love, I learned, is not the same as devotion. And devotion, when one-sided, becomes a cage.
Victor and I met at a coffee shop, of all places. I was painting in the corner, trying to capture the way the sunlight hit the window and scattered across the floor. He sat down at my table without asking and told me my work was “interesting,” a word that felt like both a compliment and a dismissal. I should have seen it then—the arrogance, the need to dominate even the smallest of spaces. But I was young and naive, and when he smiled, I felt special.
For a time, he made me feel like I was the center of his universe. He would talk for hours about his ideas, his plans, his brilliance, and I would listen, enraptured by his confidence. He would praise me, but always in ways that seemed to tie my worth to him. “You’re so talented,” he’d say. “If only you had someone to guide you, someone like me.” I didn’t see the strings he was attaching to every compliment. Not at first.
Our life together was a pattern. He spoke; I listened. He demanded; I gave. When he criticized my art, I stopped painting for weeks. When he dismissed my emotions as “dramatic,” I learned to swallow my tears. When he told me I was lucky to have someone like him, I believed him. For years, I believed him.
But cracks have a way of forming, even in the strongest cages.
The first crack came on a quiet Tuesday evening. He came home in one of his moods, slamming doors and muttering under his breath about his coworkers’ incompetence. I greeted him with my usual smile, but when he snapped at me for not picking up his dry cleaning, something inside me shifted. I opened my mouth to apologize, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I said, “You could have picked it up yourself.”
The look on his face was almost comical. He stared at me like I’d just grown another head, and then he laughed, a sharp, humorless sound. “Don’t start with me, Lila,” he said. “I’ve had a long day.”
I didn’t argue. I just turned and went back to my studio, my hands trembling as I picked up my brush. That night, I painted until my shoulders ached, pouring every ounce of frustration and anger into the canvas. For the first time in years, I felt alive.
The cracks widened after that. I started spending more time in my studio and less time catering to Victor’s whims. I stopped laughing at his jokes when they were cruel, and I walked away when he raised his voice. At first, he tried to charm me back into submission, but when that didn’t work, he turned to anger. “You’re nothing without me,” he spat one night after I refused to cancel a gallery showing to attend a work dinner with him.
I looked at him then, really looked at him, and I saw the man behind the mask. A man so terrified of his own inadequacies that he had to tear others down to feel whole. “Ah yes, therein lies the problem,” I said quietly. “You’re the only one who thinks so.”
Still, rather than just walking away, I engaged in one last battle. No holds barred here. I let him know everything I had ever felt about how his childhood has destroyed him as a person and that he would always be alone, truly and irrevocably alone, if he didn’t face that and make a purposeful effort to heal.
He lashed out with his worst insults and the nastiest subtleties to undermine my confidence in my self, my abilities, and most especially my sanity. It felt like he wanted to shred me apart from the inside out and it took every last ounce of my anger over the years I had wasted by his side to not allow anything he said to take root as it had in the past.
When he was done, satisfied that he’d ensured loyalty once more, that I was in my rightful place, he went to bed. I packed my things. And by the time he woke up the next morning, I was gone.
Leaving wasn’t easy. For years, Victor had been the center of my world, and walking away felt like stepping into a void. Everything was beyond unknown, it was alien, seen through the eyes of a broken psyche that had once been a very strong, whole personality.
But as the days turned into weeks, I began to rediscover myself. I painted for hours without interruption, my work growing bolder and more vibrant. I laughed with friends who I’d neglected during my time with Victor, and I found joy in the simplest things—a cup of coffee, a walk in the park, the sound of rain against the window.
It was during this time that I began to truly analyze Victor because I needed to understand how I had become so entrenched in such an abusive relationship. I saw his patterns, his defenses, his wounds. All the red flags I made a million excuses for and tended to like a battlefield nurse instead of protecting myself from them.
But he wasn’t the untouchable figure he presented to the world; he was a man shaped by pain he refused to confront. His angry, controlling mother had crushed his spirit as a child, dictating every aspect of his life until he had no room to breathe and making fun of him for things about himself that were beyond his control. His emotionally absent father had left him longing for approval and natural intimacy he would never receive and without protection from his mother which he’d so desperately needed. Victor had spent his entire life running from that pain, building walls so high that no one, not even himself, could see over them.
But understanding him didn’t mean excusing him. It didn’t mean going back. I knew better than to believe I could fix him, and I knew he would never heal unless he made the choice to confront his past. And so, when he showed up at my gallery show months later, I wasn’t surprised. He stood at the edge of the room, his eyes scanning the paintings until they landed on one in particular. A piece titled “Silence.”
The painting depicted a man sitting in a dark, empty room, his face obscured but his posture heavy with loneliness. The walls around him were painted with faint impressions of another figure—a woman slipping away, her form becoming less defined with every step she took. I had painted it in the days after I left, pouring all my grief and anger and clarity into the canvas. It was my way of saying goodbye. Catharsis always has its perks.
Victor stared at the painting for a long time, his jaw tight and his hands clenched at his sides. When he finally looked at me, there was something almost vulnerable in his eyes. Almost.
“Is this how you see me?” he asked.
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I met his gaze and said the words I’d rehearsed a hundred times in the event that he would inevitably show up to try to force me back under his control.
“I see you, Victor. I see the boy who learned to build walls so no one could hurt him, the man still trying to outrun his own reflection. I see your pain, and I understand it, but I won’t carry it for you. Until you face it yourself, until you stop running and make peace with the emptiness, you’ll stay exactly like this—the man in that painting. Alone.”
He flinched, but I didn’t let up. “I loved you, Victor. I loved you more than anyone else ever will. But love isn’t enough if you refuse to love yourself. You have to face your past. You have to let yourself feel. Otherwise, this is it. This is your life.”
For a moment, I thought he might say something, that he might finally break through the walls he’d spent his life building. But then his expression hardened, and the vulnerability vanished.
“You’re wrong,” he said, his voice cold and distant. His eyes had shuttered like windows in the wake of an oncoming storm.“I’m fine. I don’t need anyone.”
He turned and walked away, a large cloud of angry lightning crackling under the surface. And I let him go. As I watched him leave, I felt a strange mix of sorrow and relief. Sorrow for the man he could have been, and relief that I was no longer bound to the man he chose to be. Part of me hoped he would take my advice. Most of me knew he never would. He never could. That would mean admitting he was wrong and that was far, far too scary an idea for Victor Sullivan.
That night, I went back to my studio and painted until dawn. For the first time in years, I felt free.