On loyalty, and the pitfalls therein
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, do not deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
From The Man himself, Kipling. Seriously, if you want some poetry with punch and edge, and are willing to give a little because the man wrote for an audience and from the viewpoint of the largest empire ever made, check him out.
Okay, Loyalty.
What a mindfuck this is. Loyalty. Loyalty is a force and an instrument of behavior that I have just not understood as to myself. All through my childhood, I lost contact with friends, but never once have I turned my back on them, no matter what they did or the respect I lost for them. I never tossed a friend or a person aside.
So this is where I am- I gave my trust and loyalty to one person, and she has decided to spit it back on my face. To many, indeed, to most of my friends, even to my parents, this is ample reason for me to toss the issue aside. An excuse and entitlement for me to say "Fine. you're not needed or wanted, and I will not suffer for you any longer."
And for some, for most, that's what it may be. But I find myself caught. This is the person I lived with through thick and thin, better and worse, sickness and health. This is the woman I loved and courted and visited. This is the mother of my children and my first experience physically with a woman and the one person who means (meant?) more to me then family, than upbringing, than my own qualms when I decided to give myself to her.
And she decided it wasn't worth it, and went with something (and someone) new and shiny and easy and less work because the honeymoon period was still on. And I'm left struggling with myself because I have one question about this.
What is my word, my oath and my bond WORTH?
Do I lessen myself and my loyalty by going to and being with and binding myself to another woman? Does it lessen my oath? If one side of a covenant decides to break it, the covenant is void... or is it? Does someone else not being worthy of what was sworn, not being willing or strong enough to face up to the burden and live their oath REALLY release me from my vows? Or does it mean I am left with them? Does it mean that I, as the person who did not break them need to stand vigil over the shattered remnants of what was? Does it make me less of a person to let things fall and become the type of person she became, find someone new and pretend nothing happened, that there was nothing there, and that we actually tried to make things work out, but it didn't?
I find myself unsure.
I want to be with someone. I want to hold to someone, have that comfort. I want to cling to someone in the night when these thoughts swirl churn and make a storm of my mind and memories. To have the safe harbour of another there to shelter in.
If I did... What would that make of me? Of my oath, my vow and my bond? Of what I know in my deepest gut I feel, and that burns within my bones, unable to be shut up for long?
Loyalty.
I have sworn an oath and made a covenant with a woman who was false to it and walked away because it suited her, and she had her selfishness and her friends telling her it would be easier and better to let go. And still, I stay faithful. Because of myself, and my questions, and the seriousness with which I take such commitment. And so, my monument is this: my word is kept. And what wondrous things my oath keeping has wrought...
I MET a Traveler from an antique land,
Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings!
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelly
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, do not deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
From The Man himself, Kipling. Seriously, if you want some poetry with punch and edge, and are willing to give a little because the man wrote for an audience and from the viewpoint of the largest empire ever made, check him out.
Okay, Loyalty.
What a mindfuck this is. Loyalty. Loyalty is a force and an instrument of behavior that I have just not understood as to myself. All through my childhood, I lost contact with friends, but never once have I turned my back on them, no matter what they did or the respect I lost for them. I never tossed a friend or a person aside.
So this is where I am- I gave my trust and loyalty to one person, and she has decided to spit it back on my face. To many, indeed, to most of my friends, even to my parents, this is ample reason for me to toss the issue aside. An excuse and entitlement for me to say "Fine. you're not needed or wanted, and I will not suffer for you any longer."
And for some, for most, that's what it may be. But I find myself caught. This is the person I lived with through thick and thin, better and worse, sickness and health. This is the woman I loved and courted and visited. This is the mother of my children and my first experience physically with a woman and the one person who means (meant?) more to me then family, than upbringing, than my own qualms when I decided to give myself to her.
And she decided it wasn't worth it, and went with something (and someone) new and shiny and easy and less work because the honeymoon period was still on. And I'm left struggling with myself because I have one question about this.
What is my word, my oath and my bond WORTH?
Do I lessen myself and my loyalty by going to and being with and binding myself to another woman? Does it lessen my oath? If one side of a covenant decides to break it, the covenant is void... or is it? Does someone else not being worthy of what was sworn, not being willing or strong enough to face up to the burden and live their oath REALLY release me from my vows? Or does it mean I am left with them? Does it mean that I, as the person who did not break them need to stand vigil over the shattered remnants of what was? Does it make me less of a person to let things fall and become the type of person she became, find someone new and pretend nothing happened, that there was nothing there, and that we actually tried to make things work out, but it didn't?
I find myself unsure.
I want to be with someone. I want to hold to someone, have that comfort. I want to cling to someone in the night when these thoughts swirl churn and make a storm of my mind and memories. To have the safe harbour of another there to shelter in.
If I did... What would that make of me? Of my oath, my vow and my bond? Of what I know in my deepest gut I feel, and that burns within my bones, unable to be shut up for long?
Loyalty.
I have sworn an oath and made a covenant with a woman who was false to it and walked away because it suited her, and she had her selfishness and her friends telling her it would be easier and better to let go. And still, I stay faithful. Because of myself, and my questions, and the seriousness with which I take such commitment. And so, my monument is this: my word is kept. And what wondrous things my oath keeping has wrought...
I MET a Traveler from an antique land,
Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings!
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelly