band aid covers the bullet hole

Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

I remember the day my world came crushing down like it was yesterday. It wasn't, but I'm quite certain I will carry that burden for the rest of my life. That day, someone I thought I trusted with my very life let me down. A person I had elevated on the highest pedestal you can possibly elevate another proved themselves a mere mortal. They erred, and in so doing they made me think them less deserving of my reverence. It's been a long climb back up, but in that time I have seen in my life the veracity of time's healing nature. It hasn't ever gotten easier, and the burden hasn't gotten lighter, but I have gotten used to living with it.

I don't know if we ever really forgive people. I think one of the unique things about human beings is we were made able to spot patterns in the things around us. And that traits in behaviour are as strong a pattern as any. Let's say someone took your heart and stomped on it, broke it into a thousand pieces. And then came and picked them all up and put it back together. You might forgive them, and you might even let them back in, but is it ever the same again? Is it ever as pure as it was the first time? Are they ever the god they were before they betrayed your trust? The body recovers. Physical fractures and cuts heal. But does the heart? I don't know that the first cut is really the deepest. I think it's just the deepest till the next one. You never get used to it. Every time you get cut, it hurts just as bad as the other times.

So anyway, what to do when that person strikes again and sinks even lower?

The first time I felt like I was the one violated. I felt like I was forced to make a sacrifice that someone in my station shouldn't be made to make. I did it for what I thought was a noble reason, so I don't regret that, but I resented the fact that I was cornered. And now I just got through listening to how the same person devoured another's spirit. It's not really unique to us this occurrence. It's not an original story; it just hasn't ever been close to me before. Like how we all know death exists but don't feel it until it touches us personally. I'm scared to be alone because of the things I think about. I don't want to fall into that trap of dissociating everything amazing someone has done for you because of that one bad thing they did that hurt you - no matter how bad it was. Even when they do it again, that's still just two times, right?

I'm watching a show called Betrayal. I know, everyone says it's only TV, but I think that's rhetoric people say because they have subconsciously been conditioned to say it by pop culture; like making fun of that Kardashian show or extolling the purity of Android because of its openness. To me, it has always been uncanny how much TV can cut across to real life. How you can see in the cast things you are going through or have been through. They say on that show that if you spend time wishing for someone to go through fire for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.

I need time to come quickly and cover this hole that I'm falling into. I need to stop here and move on to happier thoughts.

END

drowning on dry land

Sometime I cry. It's becoming clear to me when. I cry when I feel I have no control. I cry when I feel like the choice isn't mine. Like everything is in someone else's hands and I'm just an unwilling participant. Like I know what I want but I also know I'm not going to get it no matter what I do. I cry when I'm angry. I cry when I sense oppression from forces I can't control. But even more than that, I cry when I feel like I am a good man stuck in an adverse situation. I cry when I feel like I don't deserve what's happening to me.

I have always been able to lash out and express myself whenever I was dissatisfied with anything. I have always taken comfort in the thought that no matter what, at least my thoughts were always my own. Not anyone else's. But not lately. It's taken me a minute to get here, these are things I cannot so easily talk about. I've recently been through one of those moments, when you wish you were never born, or were born under different circumstances. In that moment, I felt like there was more on my shoulders than they were wont to bear.

The classic defintion of selfishness to me came from one Oscar Wilde. Selfishness is not living as one wishes. It is asking others to live is one wishes. There was an argument when I was at home. It was bad. And I have had nightmares about it ever since it happened. It started as something small but when it was over my life was completely changed by it. I still don't know if I can talk about it, but I know two nights don't go by when I don't think about it. This is the second time now in my life that I have wished I could tell the future. So that I would look and see what the consquences of my current actions would be before I committed them. And not just consequences on me, but on the people around me.

Maybe one day I will be able to talk about these things openly. Maybe one day I won't have those nightmares. And maybe when it's my turn and I have my own sacrifices to make, I'll do what I think was the right thing to do. I hope I won't be selfish. I hope I won't be supremacist. And I hope I will have the wherewithall to listen. But for now, for now I must continue to block that weekend. It's a sad day when someone like me can't say what they really want to say. Because that day, I'm not myself. The person that I am doesn't exist anymore. Something happened that weekend that I can't ever take back. And I can't talk about it. So I cry. And it's not the good kind.

END