I have missed you; where have you been?
“Yes, I missed you too. But I’ve been busy.”
Busy? Doing what?
“Believing.”
Oh, come on! You know better than that.
“True, but hope springs eternal and all that jazz.”
What did your mother tell you?
“Love many, trust few and always paddle your own canoe. But I don’t think that was her original work, you know.”
Doesn’t matter – it was still important to learn. You’ve obviously remembered it. Now, tell me why you actually cannot seem to make it part of you.
“Well, Blog, it goes like this. I found what I believed to be commonality with someone – someones – and ultimately found out that while there is commonality, there is also perhaps too great a difference for me to be safe in that setting.”
Tell me what you mean. You’re being a bit vague and general.
“I cannot. You know me well, Blog, and you know that my world is based on confidentiality. Even though I may feel betrayed by someone or something or – I still maintain. It is essential to who I am and what I am that I never betray others or a confidence. You know that.”
I do, but I sense this is troubling you somehow.
“It is, Blog, it is. It amazes me sometimes, the amount of trust placed in me, and how naive that must make me appear – so that the very people who are trusting me and my integrity feel like it is okay to wipe their muddy boots on any part of my person they can reach.”
Again, you’re vague. Give me an example.
“Okay. Let’s take an example from my work world. Often, I need to pay certain costs and expenses for attorneys I contract to, right? The fastest, most secure way to accomplish these things is if I use their plastic. They give me their numbers – ALL the numbers – and I make the necessary charges. And safeguard their numbers almost more carefully than I do my own.
“And then they can stiff me on a bill for my time and services, or make me wait an interminable amount of time, or short pay me and tell me about their trip here, their new purchase there, or whatever. And still I’m sitting on those credit card numbers while my bills are going unpaid, both payables and receivables.
“They trust, Blog, that I would never reach the point of simply transferring the applicable amount from their plastic to my account.”
Well, I do see your quandary. You are trust-worthy – to a fault sometimes. But I sense that this is bothering you on a deeper scale than the silly of your contract attorneys. What is it really?
“Well, we can take this further into my personal life, but I’m not going to be more specific, because I cannot. But, it happens to me there too, with a different currency: my time and caring. I invest that in people, who I believe are making a balancing investment in me or the relationship. I give my confidences, and receive them. Like I give my time, skill and experience, and expect to be paid for it to the attorneys. Do you see?
“I’m certain that during the course of the relationship, intentions are good all around – that there is a mutual belief in the mutuality of the investment. But there comes a moment where that changes, and oddly enough, I’m not the one who ever walks away. I don’t jump to conclusions, make assumptions or judgments; I always know that there are things I don’t know that contribute to any given moment or action or words or feelings. Maybe it is from a life spent seeking all the evidence – good and bad – to prepare cases for trial. I don’t see in black and white, and I know that I’m never hearing the whole story – ever.
“I don’t seem to be able to find people who have the same systemic knowledge and understanding that it takes a LONG time talking about the same topic in a person’s life to get ALL the facts and the whole story in sequence. You have to investigate, repeat, investigate, discuss, investigate, repeat – over and over – because no one ever tells the whole story, no matter how many words they use. People take a long time to admit they could have been wrong, or could have acted in a way that was less than appropriate for the circumstances. In fact, they will often edit the story to paint themselves in the best possible light, no matter what the consequence. They also spend a lot of time justifying things – and most of that turns out to be so much window-dressing and unnecessary. But it seems to be universal.
“I know I do it too; there are lots of things going on in my life – and I keep them in boxes. Sometimes the boxes have items in them with similar characteristics – some stupid family thing will happen at or near the same time a friend or work thing does – and my response to each of them is so similar that if I haven’t shared ALL the circumstances with EVERYbody I’m dealing with or talking to, they can be confused or take things personally that have no direct bearing on them or anything they are involved in. This is frustrating.
“Then I discover I’m not involved in a co-equal investment scheme after all. I always seem to choose folks who need me more than I need them and give them what they need. Where it gets bad is when I have a need. At that moment, I become – meaningless. Of course, they still trust that I won’t betray their confidence. But I can generally tell mine isn’t being respected and is being bantered about; that’s pretty unsettling.”
You do have a problem, my dear Blogger. What do you plan to do about this?
“That’s just it, Blog. I don’t have a plan. I have never had a plan that fixes this; it’s a life-long problem. Every alternative I contemplate involves a fundamental, and totally unacceptable, change in my core personality. I’m not capable of making that fundamental, core, change. To do so would be to reduce my level of integrity to the commonality I experience. I cannot do that.”
So? Where do you go from here?
“I think I go back to accepting that I am what I am, based in my fundamental belief in the necessity of being trust-worthy – that I remain a person who would not betray a trust. I can’t change that.
“It is kind of too bad, really, too. Because I’ve been trusted with confidences, and schemes and intentions – things I’ve actually seen played out – I could betray those, and cause other people to feel what I am feeling, but worse in some ways. IF I were mean-spirited, or a vengeful person, I could just let it all out – trickle the confidences in the ‘right’ ears, you know? and watch the fall-out.”
That’s SO not like you, Blogger – what’s making you think that way? I’ve never even heard you consider that in your deepest, most hidden then deleted, drafts.
“Maybe this time, the hurt goes deeper than usual, Blog. I’m not sure why though, because I’ve been expecting this moment for months. I’ve seen the signs, so to speak.
“Coffee, dogs, yarn – these are the things that never let me down, and don’t expect me to not betray them when they’ve betrayed me on some level. That is all.”
