Tag: Personal story

Beauty is Intoxicating

Every gift is a curse. But, is every curse also a gift?

I’m going to take the long way around a pretty basic question, but one that I am honestly curious about and would love to hear any thoughts on the matter.

When I was a teenager, I had a number of “love interests” that were short-lived, but intense enough that I remember them vividly. I went from Tom-boy to boy-crazy fairly quickly, in just one summer actually. For someone so young I found myself navigating very choppy waters without a smidgeon of skill.

Two of them, around the age of 16 and 17, are fit examples for this story. One was a short-term boyfriend, another was a near miss.

The near miss was a one-legged salesman. I was a shoe sales clerk at the shopping mall in Chesterfield, Missouri. It was actually a really good job and I was glad to have it. Suburban life before car age is brutally boring for someone like me. I finally felt free and so adult-like as I strutted through the mall on breaks in my heavily discounted Overland Trading Company shoes.

I don’t remember which shop it was now, but I would expressly wander in that direction just to see if he was there. He would smile at me, I felt he was even waiting for me to pass by, and I would smile back, maybe give a cute little wave for added effect.

That he had only one leg was not what made me want to gawk at him. But rather that he was gorgeous. I mean, seriously Gorgeous. Handsome, amazing build, confident, well-dressed, and just the right amount of older for a 16 year old to get herself swooning in his direction.

We talked at some point. Went to the food court together. Became, not exactly friends, but something like ‘mall buddies’. Then somehow it happened that we decided to have a real date, where he came over to my house to pick me up in his car.

And I will never forget that moment. It was a sudden disaster. That he had one leg did not phase me in the public sphere, not at all. It felt like a non-issue. Sure, I was curious what had happened, and I’m sure I asked at one point and he answered, but I don’t recall his story. I liked him. I especially liked looking at him. I liked that he liked me. I remember, I really liked that.

I remember he was kind, and a gentleman. And I hated myself. I hated myself that suddenly, seeing him in my house, something switched for me that I could not comprehend. I sensed overwhelmingly, all of a sudden, that I could not be who he needed me to be. It was a shameful, and quite devastating feeling for me at that ripe young age.

On one other occasion not long afterward I again became intoxicated by another young man’s beauty. He was my age and the son of a family friend from church. Everybody loved him. It also ended badly, despite my genuine feelings for him, that certainly went beyond just his great looks. And that also came down to the same issue, in 20/20 hindsight: I can’t be who you need me to be. The realization coming too late to avoid the associated pain. Their beauty, I really believe, clouded what I should’ve seen before leading them on.

And my point in sharing these very old recollections is, could the opposite also be true? I guess I feel it would be nice if it were. I saw a man the other day who was clearly very compromised—and my heart went out to him, in a very pitying way. I knew, from his appearance, he suffered many hardships in life. I’d like to believe that in his apparent curse, he has found a deeper gift. Sort of like the opposite of the gift of beauty that invariably bestows pain due to all of us who are so entranced by it.

Or, I’m just looking for an avenue out of my automatic pity for him? Thoughts?

How Lies Land

With all the obvious lies flying around the entire Mediated-Sphere, I got to reminiscing about my former best friend at university who was an unrepentant liar.

The story of the end of our friendship still hurts to recall, 30 years later. I lost not only her friendship at that time, but that of the circle of friends we shared as well. A double whammy, if you will.

While I understand there are always (at least) two sides to every story, I haven’t spoken to her since those days, so how she recalls these events, or if she recalls them at all, I don’t know, and I don’t care.

I’m recounting this story now because I see in the public in general there are FAR too many who are too hesitant to tear themselves away from liars and the clearly corrupt institutions they are running, which I know will be to their detriment in the long-term, as well as to the detriment of us all.

The longer you wait, the more entrenched, and accepted, the lies become.

I share this story as an appeal, yet another one, and a warning.

My little story is inconsequential to everyone else but me. But it does have an accompanying lesson from which anyone could benefit.

This friend and I were so tight we shared a studio apartment and were nearly inseparable for several years. I met her at the beginning of my freshman year, not long after I met my boyfriend.

To make a long and dramatic story short and succinct—she was sleeping with my boyfriend all those years behind my back. After he and I broke up, she still didn’t tell me about the two of them. Then she got pregnant by him, but I still didn’t know. She asked me to borrow money and I asked why. She became very secretive.

I heard from another friend she had been reading my private journal, because she wanted to find out if I was still in love with the ex-boyfriend. I got suspicious and tried to talk with her several times about it all, but she waved me off each time. I refused her the money and she got livid. We got into a screaming fight. I was still baffled by it all because I didn’t know the real issue—that she was pregnant by my ex-boyfriend and wanted the money for an abortion.

Even after all that, I would’ve forgiven her, if only she had come clean. She never did. I wrote in my journal, which I knew by then she was reading, that it’s not the lies that break trust so much as the refusal to face them even when confronted. The cover-up was worse than the initial lies.

Why? Because that’s where I learned every single person in our circle of friends knew about their liaison except for me. For years.

It wasn’t about the boyfriend, either. I’d have handed him over with pleasure, had she ever asked. But then, that’s the whole point for a narcissist, or someone intent on winning at any cost—it’s not as fun if you don’t steal it—fair and square.

She deflected, made excuses, minimized, tried to turn the tables. She showed no remorse, would take no accountability, refused to apologize, or even to listen to me, or show me a shred of compassion.

You might think it was the humiliation, or the betrayal, that caused me so much pain and that guided my decision-making after that point. But as painful as those were, that was not my breaking point.

No. My breaking point was being honest with myself about the content of their characters that had become glaringly obvious at that point, so much so that I could no longer stand to be around them. Any of them. They could not look me in the eye. They would not show an ounce of remorse or try to understand my pain or my position.

It was really, really hard, but I walked away.

I wish I could say that was the last time I made such a mistake. No again. It took another couple of decades for me to correct this issue. It took until the point I realized that it was my fault.

Of course I don’t take any blame away from her, her behavior was deplorable. But, I also knew her moral standards were low. I knew she’d done similar things to other friends. I just thought, because I was more loyal to her, a better friend, more honest, more committed, I could inspire her to not play me that way. I should’ve known better.

Giving such people the benefit of the doubt, and second chances and third chances, is not loyalty, or strength, or courage. It is enabling liars and it is highly damaging to self-respect.

She went on to become a pharmaceutical rep. I have little doubt she has still not done enough soul searching to realize or regret yet another move down the low road.

And this is where we stand in America. We are being lied to by those all around us, by those who have positioned themselves as our betters, our leaders, our trusted officials, our media.

They are lying. The time for excuses is over, already decades ago. The problems we need to face will not be fixed by voting for the next Liar In Chief. To continue on with the charade at this late date makes you a collaborator by every definition, no longer able to claim innocence or ignorance.

LIVE NOT BY LIES
“On the day Solzhenitsyn was arrested, February, 12, 1974, he released the text of “Live Not by Lies.” The next day, he was exiled to the West, where he received a hero’s welcome. This moment marks the peak of his fame. Solzhenitsyn equates “lies” with ideology, the illusion that human nature and society can be reshaped to predetermined specifications. And his last word before leaving his homeland urges Soviet citizens as individuals to refrain from cooperating with the regime’s lies. Even the most timid can take this least demanding step toward spiritual independence. If many march together on this path of passive resistance, the whole inhuman system will totter and collapse.”

— by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney, The Solzhenitsyn Reader