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| At it again...all for you. |
by Angela K. Durden
The Most Brilliant Woman in the World
There are two things I adore more than anything: Justice and Loyalty. I capitalize these here because to me they aren’t hollow words. They are ideals.
Justice, if we want it to be lasting, must be rendered by God…and it will be in His good time. Otherwise we get small justices that bring partial justice, but never heal. Religious doctrinal opinion with quoted scriptural support and discussions about judicial systems wide variance of application of due process of law are for another essay at another time.
Loyalty, on the other hand. I know my Heavenly Father has been loyal to me, but that is often not seen until years later and looking back. A daily dose of it, though, is something I believed could be had from ordinary humans, one to one, in the moment. It wouldn’t be easy, but surely people of integrity would just be that, right? Wouldn’t they see the bigger picture and be willing to sacrifice themselves for loyalty to a cause, or even to a person?
I believe I am wrong in this.
Being loyal is defined as faithful adherence to a cause, ideal, practice, custom, or person. Having loyalty means the absence subversive tendencies or liaisons. One can even be loyal in their opposition if that opposition is for constructive purposes.
Yet what I find more and more to be the case is that loyalty from one person to another is not as widespread as I thought. Then again, maybe it’s always been the case and I am just now seeing it. Maybe loyalty is not as dogged as I had always assumed it to be. Maybe I have an overactive loyalty meter toward others. Maybe I have a fanciful and romantic vision of what loyalty should be and therefore I am always disappointed when the reality of it slaps me in the face.
I write this in the early morning hours after a long month of back-to-back episodes of having those I am loyal to not being loyal back. Insulting me. Spreading rumors about me. Undermining projects I’m working on. Pretending not to know I asked for assistance. Refusing assistance with vague excuses of being sick or busy. Not getting things they promised to me in a timely enough fashion thereby throwing me under the bus.
The problem for me is that most of what I do is creative in nature. I know a lot of creative people in various industries. Creatives tend to form what look and sound like friendships so that the line between business and personal becomes blurred. I know I have a difficult time with that separation myself, but to me loyalty is loyalty. If someone is worth being loyal to in one part of your life, why not all parts?
Like I said, this last month had multiple opportunities in them for people to be disloyal. The thing is, this is not a new situation for me. My mother was not loyal to me. My brothers and sister were not loyal to me. My stepfather wasn’t loyal to me. I was the one who was always loyal to them, no matter what, sacrificing myself to them, for them. But it was never returned.
Granted, homes with abusive parents are not places where one expects to find loyalty. But my marriage was not any better. At a business event one time where I was shining as a bright, smart, beneficial addition to the proceedings, a man said to my husband that he must be proud to have such a smart, beautiful, and good-natured woman for a wife. My husband did not know I was walking up to him, but I clearly heard him say dismissively — and disloyally, “She isn’t anything like that. She’s not smart. She’s just…” He shrugged like I was a piece of trash. The man was shocked, and he felt badly that I heard it. After stopping dead in my tracks, I turned and walked away.
I never said anything to my husband about that. Why didn’t I? Probably because I knew how he really felt because he had been that way for a long time. He was disloyal, too, in other ways. I put it up with it until I couldn’t anymore. But he can never say that I wasn’t loyal to him through it all.
Was I stupid to keep showing loyalty to him for so long?
But this last month was particularly hard because I put myself out for so many to help them accomplish what I thought were mutually beneficial goals, only to find out, publicly, that I was just their tool. When it came time to do their part for me, it was never going to happen.
I crave loyalty so much it isn’t even funny. When I don’t get it, I feel the loss keenly. But can I say that my keen craving should be the standard against which I measure all others’ responses? Is the nature of my crave based solely on the need to feed my ego, and as such, am I only setting myself up for the fall? Am I that self-centered?
I don’t think so, but could I be fooling myself? Could the two things I value above all else — Justice and Loyalty — be two sides of the same coin? After all, isn’t disloyalty only another form of injustice and that, somehow, conflating the absolute with the makeshift makes me more disloyal to myself than anyone?
I no longer know. Even after I’ve reconciled myself to waiting on Justice, yet the crave for Loyalty hounds me every damn day.
Disloyalty is everywhere I turn. They say that wherever you go, there you are. They say that if something continues to happen to you everywhere you go, then it isn’t them, it’s you. But how could I be inviting disloyalty? How? Tell me if you know, for I do not. Am I missing what loyalties are shown to me or am I accurately defining them as what they always seem to turn out to be: Temporary ways to use Angela to their advantage by pretending to have her best interests at heart?
Frankly, I am tired of the sacrifices I make only to have them thrown in my face. I’m tired of the internal and external guilt trips laid upon me by myself and others when I speak up for me. I would rather spend time alone than go through the disappointment again of being told that others matter so much more and that I am not worth the mattering when, if to matter, means an inconvenience must be borne by another.
The words below are part of a song I wrote a few years ago. I hadn’t much thought of it since, until three days ago, that is, when they popped into my head and would not go away. And now, I write this essay and what speaks to me again? These words:
Dead eyes. Broke heart. Slammed door. Car starts.
She says to no one at all,
“Not good. Must go. Pain so slow”
burns her skin, she falls.
Time
doesn’t ease the pain.
No. No.
Yeah, it’s the way of the world.
In sleep I am aware.
Is that why I dream?
Perception is reality.
Is that why I scream?
Tell me why I am here.
Identity is strange.
Faith is not truth.
Black roses hang.
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