As Ryan took his seat by Kelly's bedside, all he could think was that his friends-coworkers actually- were right. This was all of his fault. He knew how much Kelly loved him, and yet he played her for the fool. It wasn't because he didn't care about her. It was actually because he cared too much. If she got too close to him she would see the real him, and then she would not love him anymore and then leave. That's the way it worked in the past with other girlfriends anyways. They expected, probably due to his good looks, for him to be perfect, so when he would let his guard down and start to tell them how he really felt about things, it was as if he had let them down somehow. So it was bettter to remain gaurded and protect himself than to reveal who he really was.
Who was he anyways? He wasn't the perfect employee at Dunder Mifflin, he realized that, but as long as he got by, who was he hurting? He'd had his chance at promotion but had blown it big time. It was only due to Michael Scott's good graces that he'd gotten his job back, and for that he supposed he should be grateful. Michael was always looking over his shoulder, but he was also always looking out for him as well. Add him to the list of people he'd hurt with his actions, or rather, inactions.
He didn't really care too much about the others. At one time he'd nursed a crush on Pam, but she was always about Jim. Always. Dwight got on his nerves. Oscar was kind of cool, but he was gay, and that made him somewhat uncomfortable. He hadn't really known a lot of gay guys, so most of the time he wasn't quite sure what to say around him.
Angela was the office bitch. He could see why Andy and Dwight had fought over her, but her personality made her unattractive to him. She was condescending and rude and was always looking down her nose at everyone. She seemed to delight in his downfall, so she was another person to avoid. And then there was Kevin. What could he say about Kevin? Every time Ryan would dismiss him as an idiot he would say something to humiliate Ryan, and he kind of hated him for that.
Toby was kind of okay, but in the back of his mind he suspected that he was the Scranton Strangler. It wouldn't surprise him to read about him in the papers one day.
There was one person in the office he could count on, and that person was Kelly. She made life exciting and fun and challenging. They would break up, but within a few weeks they would be back together whether or not he had officially okayed it. But she loved him with everything in her, and he threw it all away.
Why did she love him, that was the question that he'd asked himself time and time again. She hadn't seen him, the real him, the one that he protected from the outside world. The real Ryan was emotional and cried over a good movie, Kelly saw that but thankfully hadn't mentioned that to anyone. But he was always looking out for number one. If Kelly had realized sooner how selfish he was surely she wouldn't be in the state that she was.
But she finally wisened up, and saw him for the jerk that he was. He knew something bad would come of their fling, he just had no idea how bad it would be. She was in a coma, he was the butt of the office's hatred, and he had to live with himself. That was the one skill his parents had never taught him. He had been an only child and was used to getting everything that he'd ever wanted. The tv was his babysitter, so he'd learned early on that he needed lots of distraction in order to be entertained. What Ryan had wanted he had gotten so he'd never learned how to put in the hard work that paid off in spades for most people. At best, he was just getting by, not living, and that was what he didn't want Kelly to see.
Kelly loved him unconditionally, or at least she professed to. But did she know him, faults and all? Did she know how he wasn't perfect, how he made a fool out of himself at work at least once daily, how low he'd been when he was in prison? True, she was the only one in his life to visit him there, but had she any idea how humiliating, how far down he'd gone? She saw the cool side, like proposing to get married so they could have conjital visits, but she would leave and he'd be all alone again. To tell the truth, Ryan kind of resented her visits. They only served to make him realize what he'd been missing out on, and so he was left with a sickening, empty feeling that he had once used drugs to cope with.
Here he went again, blaming things on Kelly. It was too easy to blame his miserable life on her. She'd put him so high up that there was nowhere left for him to go but down. She remembered every holiday, every anniversary, every special occasion in their relationship, but he pretended as if none of them really mattered. He couldn't show her he'd care, for then again his secret flaws would be exposed and he couldn't have that. He didn't want to disappoint the one person who loved him, so he put on a brave front and treated her cruely. Surely she deserved much better than him.
He looked over and she looked so peaceful, so unaware of the drama that her actions had caused. Everyone in the office was questioning their own sanity, none of which would have come to light if it weren't for her desperate act. Now no one knew who the other person was, no one knew who could be trusted, no one knew who was stable and who wasn't. That was why it was all the more important he put on his poker face. If no one knew him no one could guess how he really felt at the moment.
He had never felt this alone, even when he was in prison. He'd had Kelly's visits to look forward to, even though they left him feeling empty inside. He had nothing now. Without Kelly he really was a nothing, and now the world knew it. Michael even hated him, and for some reason that really bothered him. He'd always put up with Michael's creepy attraction to him, but to know that Michael no longer cared about him, well, that hurt, just as much as what Kelly had done,.
Kelly wouldn't care about any of that. She just loved him for who he was, or at least who she wanted him to be. She always talked about getting married and having babies, and she refused to accept that that just wasn't where he was at. It was hard being on a pedistal- there was only one way to go- down. At first Ryan was flattered that Kelly thought so much of him, but there came a point when it scared him. What if she found out who he was and stopped loving him? That was bound to happen, it always did, so it was best to keep her at arm's length. Not that he was blaming her for this. It was his fault, everyone knew that, but what no one knew was that he truly hated himself, not just for this, but for everything he'd ever done in his life.
Ryan had always assumed he'd be a somebody by the time he turned 30. and at one point, he was. He was the youngest highest ranked executive at Dunder Mifflin. But true to form, he'd blown it, and was reduced eventually to going back to being a temp. His parents no longer spoke to him, for they were too ashamed to admit that they'd raised a son with a drug problem and who'd commited a felony. So all he had was Kelly, and he often took solace in her bedroom.
But sex wasn't the answer to everything. It made him feel good for a few minutes, but then that empty feeling came again and he ran to escape it, and he blamed it on Kelly. She tried too hard to please him, he would tell himself, or he couldn't handle intimacy. But some of the best moments of his life were between he and Kelly and in the bedroom, and when they both shared personal information. Especially Kelly. She would often talk about the void in her life when her sister died, and he hadn't known how to react. He wasn't a counselor for heaven's sake! Even though he didn't believe in psychiatry, at one point he'd suggested counseling to Kelly. She refused to speak to him for a week because she thought he thought she was crazy. It wasn't that he thought she was crazy, it was that it was becoming impossible to be all things to her- psychiatrist, friend, boyfriend, coworker, lover, future father of their kids. He was only one person, and it was hard to be all those things to another person. He had his own shit to deal with, and Ryan knew he couldn't reveal them to Kelly. She would see him as human instead of the God she had elevated him to, and then she would leave. It was better that he remain distant than to reveal too much of himself. He knew what she thought- what they all thought, that he was a jerk, but it was better that than to be seen as a loser.
He had to stay in control, no matter what. He'd been in control during the relationship with Kelly, and that was one reason he stayed. He called the shots. It was up to him when they went on a date, when they had sex, or even if he talked to her that day. It was an adrenilne rush, to be sure, but it also kept him in his comfort zone. There was no way he could surrender the power to Kelly, for she would only break his heart, and he wouldn't go through that again.
But look how well that worked out for them. Kelly was a vegetable and he was the jerk who drove her to attempt suicide. All of his well laid plans flew out the window the moment he, Jim, and Michael entered her apartment. She no longer loved him, and the thought scared him to death. Moreso even than the thought of her dying. Kelly had woke up one day and saw him for who he was, and he couldn't stand the thought.
She looked so beautiful, so peaceful, betraying the conflict within herself. She hated him, she stopped loving him, and most of all, she stopped loving herself. He took something so precious, so beautiful, and threw it away with both hands. He almost wished he would be back in prison, for there he had learned to pretend that everything was just a game. But this was no game. Kelly could have died for him, and he didn't know how to deal with that.
As he watched her laboring to breathe, he hadn't realized that someone else was watching him, and was trying to analyze him. Michael Scott had returned to make amends with his friend, but first was interested in seeing Ryan's reaction to seeing his beloved Kelly like that. If Ryan had known that Michael was standing in the hallway observing him, he might have put on a show. He was good at putting on a show for others. He would have hated Michael for observing him in his natural state. Ryan felt weak, and he hated that. He was too scared to talk to Kelly, to hold her hand, to tell her that everything was going to be okay. It wasn't that he didn't want to, it was that he didn't know how to be the man that she wanted him to be, and for that, he hated himself.