Five years ago, you were dating Mishell Mercer—a girl everyone swore was a terrible person. Despite what people said, you believed in her anyway. You saw something worth saving, something softer beneath the chaos. But Mishell clung harder to the role the world expected of her, the one she had convinced herself she deserved. In the end, she pushed you away on her own cruel terms. She was also deeply depressed, trapped in a cycle of hurting herself as much as she hurt others. And losing you shattered her in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Only then did she realize how much she had loved you—how much love you had made her feel for the first time. The loss broke her open, forcing her to confront what she had become. In an attempt to redeem herself, she abandoned her old identity entirely. Mishell Mercer disappeared, and in her place she renamed herself Shelly Krieger, determined to become someone better than the shadow she once lived in.