11.19

11/19/15

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I wonder when you gained my loyalty.

Was it the moment I met you? I don't think so. You had far too many questions, far too many glances askance, too many gaps and gasps in the records I could read on you. Like everyone else, you drag around an invisible suitcase of excrement wherever you go. Everybody's got a suitcase, by the way. Some are lighter than others; some people have got wheels on their suitcase, but everybody's got one.

After all, nobody's perfect. I know that fact far too well, though people think I haven't noticed, that I'm not aware, that my brilliance makes me stupid in not seeing the things that other people see. But I see. Sometimes I see far too well, and that makes it hard to trust.

I've had far too much practice, you see. Meet someone new, size them up--will they hurt me? will they hurt those I'm loyal to?

Perhaps you see the dilemma. Not everyone does, of course, so I'll explain myself. Of course they can hurt me. Of course they can hurt the ones I'm loyal to. 

I'd say 'the ones I love' but others think that phrase should be reserved for family, for a spouse; they talk in whispers how it's only romance and family that matters, in the end. But you make your family, and that's what I've done. But when I say it's loyalty, no one thinks anything of it.

Once you're in with me, usually you're stuck with me. That probably annoys some folks, but I don't mind. Barring deep deep betrayals and/or the willful destruction of the happiness or the joy of those I'm loyal to, you're stuck with me. But you cross that line, and you're gone. You were smart enough to see that from the get-go.

Loyalty (love) is like that, you know. It's letting people in, letting them hold the knife and trusting that they know better than to plunge it into your vulnerable and exposed heart. (Mine's always been on my sleeve, my mother says, and that's what has made the masks, the disguises, the illusions, necessary.)

They're always so clever, just like I am, but the illusions don't matter to those who see through them.

Like you. And the others I've let see me.

So it wasn't the moment I met you.

But it was soon after.

(And yet. And yet I still hide. From those I'm loyal to. From those I could be loyal to. From myself.)
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