The Black Sheep Is a Dark Horse

Image made from ChatGPT

How can someone be born a villain? Hated by all, loved by none? When others are handed gold, you get chaff. When they are praised, you are punished. You are never the favourite, never the chosen one. And the world reminds you constantly. So much so that you begin to hate yourself, because you are the world — or at least, your own world.

People always complain. Everyone knows someone who should “do better.” There’s always that one person whose life has never looked clean. Not the sparkling cleanness of new glass. That one person who feels perpetually hunted, like the universe has a vendetta against them.

If something bad happens, it must be them. Trouble’s best friend. Chaos’ most loyal disciple. Peace unsettles them, people say. And yet, the black sheep never asked for this.

They simply learned too early and too harshly — that nothing is expected of them. And in that vacuum of expectation, they begin to burn. Not with rage, but with a slow fire. A fire not fanned by ambition, but by disappointment, not always their own, but projected upon them by others. A fire that can destroy them, or forge them into something beautiful.

I’ve seen villains become heroes. I’ve seen people rise from zero to one, then to a hundred and beyond. They don’t surprise themselves; they surprise everyone else. They know their flaws. They carry their scars openly. They cannot hide their failures, so they learn to walk with them.

Maybe black sheep aren’t interested in light. Maybe they’ve accepted that some rooms are too bright to build in. So they choose the blur. They grow in the dark. Quietly, stubbornly. Not for show. Not for applause. But for survival.

They don’t always listen. They don’t always learn. They see everything, but they don’t always look. When they care, it’s temporary. When they stop, it’s permanent. Their indifference is mistaken for defiance. Their silence, for emptiness. Their distance, for apathy.

But they feel gently, deeply, and remotely. They absorb more than they express. Why speak when no one is listening? Why share when no one values your truth? And so they continue building in silence, waiting for the day when they won’t have to beg for light — the day their existence becomes the light.

They are often left behind, considered useless, excluded from survival’s equation. Found, but secretly wished lost. Alive, but inconvenient. Children whose worth is questioned by their own parents. I’ve heard parents ask, “Are you even worth calling my child?” A cruelty only parenthood, burdened by pain and pride, can muster.

The good child belongs to the father. The bad one? “Go to your mother.”

The black sheep finds no joy in the fold. When she speaks, no one listens. When she listens, no one speaks. Love lives at home, but none of it reaches her. They are rare. He is rare. She is rare. Rarely seen becoming because no one watches long enough to see them become.

But in silence — true, suffocating silence — the black sheep builds. Fights. Even steals. Just to have a taste of what others are born into: acceptance. Belonging. Worth.

“Never” is a word that should never be spoken. Everyone can become anyone. Who decides which heart deserves love? Who teaches love to discriminate? Why is one child a crown and the other a curse?

Is it love if it only arrives once the black sheep has turned the table? If joy is only returned when their face reflects success? Or are we just witnessing the bright hearts of critics, finally dimmed by the reality they failed to predict?

The black sheep carries an advantage: freedom from the weight of expectations. They are not watched, so they are free to roam. Free to rise. They are not pressured to perform, only pushed to persist. And loyalty — true loyalty — does not show up when the skies are clear. It arrives at dawn, after long nights of death and doubt.

The black sheep is a dark horse. Not the favourite. Not the chosen. But never out of the race.

You may think you’re better but they are not worse.

And if they beat you to the prize you’ve idolised, accept it in pain. Because your love for them, if it only arrives then, was never love at all.