The Puppet

There are three kinds of people in this world. From a distance, they all look exactly the same. Two eyes, two hands, one beating heart hidden inside a chest. They walk the same streets, they breathe the same air. But if you look closer, if you really, truly look closer into their eyes, you will realize the difference between them is as vast and as endless as the difference between the sky and the earth.

The first kind of people are the chasers. They are the runners. They spend their entire lives running, and they never stop. They run behind money, they run behind fame, they run behind attention and validation from people they don't even like. They are so busy running that they never notice the most beautiful parts of life that they are trampling under their own feet. The morning tea getting cold, a mother's worried call, a friend's silent goodbye, they miss everything. For them, only one thing exists and that is money. They truly, deeply believe that money is everything. And in a way, they are not wrong. Money is everything, but only for this world, only until your last breath is still inside your body. They are so blinded by this race that they forget the simplest and most terrifying truth of this life, that when a man finally dies, when his hands become cold, all of his millions, all of his bank balance, turns back into just paper. Just paper that he cannot take with him.

The second kind of people are the ghosts. They have absolutely nothing to do with this world and its noise. They have no big wishes, no big dreams that keep them awake at night. No anxiety about buying the latest PS5, no excitement for a new movie coming out, no favorite actor to follow and fight for on the internet. They live in a completely different world, a quiet world that they have built inside their own mind. They mind their own business. Not many friends, no hunger for fame, no thirst for attention. Even if God himself blessed them with a talent so powerful that it could shake the entire world, they would still hide it. They would still choose a normal, quiet, simple life, because peace is more valuable to them than any fame. They love to stay hidden, to stay unseen. They are the kind of people who can be standing in the middle of the loudest, most crowded party in the world, with music blasting and people laughing, and still be completely, utterly alone. They are there, but they are not there. They will talk to you, they will smile at you, they will nod at everything you say, but they will never really let you inside. They never really talk.

And then, there is the third kind of people. The saddest ones. The weakest ones. The ones who have no one in this world except themselves.

At first glance, if you see them from far away, they look exactly like the second kind. Quiet, alone, lost in their own thoughts, sitting in a corner. But if you come close, you will see the difference, and the difference is so brutal, so cruel, that it will break your heart. That difference is fate.

When the second kind of people dream, it feels like the whole universe quietly moves to help them, to protect them. But when the third kind of people dare to dream, even a small dream, the whole world stands up, points a finger at them, and blames them. It shames them.

They are forced. They are controlled. From the very day they were born, since their childhood, they have only heard one sentence, played on repeat like a curse: Don't do this. Don't go there. Don't say that. Don't wear this. Don't laugh like that. Every single thing in their life has a rule, every single wish has a restriction. They are stopped at every single step, corrected at every single word, until slowly, slowly, they become terrified of even trying. They become so scared that they stop dreaming altogether. They live their entire life in a constant, silent fear that someone will come and scold them again, that someone will again tell them that they are wrong.

Their own people, the people who claim to love them the most, keep them like a bird in a golden cage. Yes, they give the bird everything. They give it the most expensive food, the cleanest water, a cage made of gold that shines in the sun. The cage is beautiful, everyone praises the cage. But they never, ever open the door to let it fly. They think they are protecting the bird from the storms outside, from the cruel world. But in reality, they are not protecting it. They are stealing the only thing that bird was ever born for. They are stealing its freedom. Because a bird was never meant to live a comfortable life behind bars. A bird was born to get lost in the sky, to fly until its wings hurt, to be free.

The same exact thing happens to them. Their own family locks their feet with love. Their own society ties invisible ropes around their wings with the name of respect and rules. It never lets them fly. And the worst part is, if one day, after gathering all their courage, they finally try to do something on their own, something small, something for themselves, they are tortured so much emotionally, with such painful words and such heavy guilt, that they start to feel like they have committed a huge, unforgivable sin just by trying to be themselves.

And then, after years of this, a time finally comes. A very quiet, very lonely time.

A time comes when they finally, silently, walk away from everyone. No shouting, no fighting, no dramatic goodbye. They just walk away. And they build a very small, very quiet world of their own, far away from everyone else. In that world, they stop asking. They don't ask anyone for anything, not even for the smallest, tiniest thing. They learn to wipe their own tears, they learn to save their own money, coin by coin, and they buy their own little happiness with their own bruised hands. At an age where other kids are making a thousand demands and driving their parents crazy for new clothes and new phones, they are just sitting silently in a corner of a room, watching everyone else live their lives, watching everyone else be loved.

By that time, they have listened to so much hate, so much taunting, so much rejection for so many years, that their heart has finally learned how to become numb. Now nothing affects them. No insult hurts them, no praise makes them happy. They just don't care anymore what the world thinks about them. And the world, because it cannot understand silence, looks at them and gives them a name. It calls them villains. Cold, heartless, rude, attitude-filled villains.

But the truth that no one knows is, they stay away from the world not because they hate the world. They stay away because they finally know the truth about themselves.

They know that inside their chest, there is no longer a normal heart beating. Inside, there is an ocean. A massive, deep, dark, and silent ocean of all the words they wanted to say but never could, and all the tears they wanted to cry but had to hold back.

And they know, with absolute certainty, that if they were to ever share even a single drop of that painful ocean with someone, just one single drop, it would be enough to drown that person's entire peace, to destroy their whole world forever. So they choose to stay silent. They choose to carry that ocean all alone. And they let the world call them a villain.