Betrayal is a complicated thing, especially for someone who is loyal to a fault. I am the kind of person who will give up everything to make sure the people I love are taken care of. So when I end up betrayed, it’s especially jarring. Add on to that my own intense neurotic self-doubt and its a catastrophic situation.
It is also a word that has gotten a bad reputation for being overly dramatic. I disagree, because really, being betrayed happens all the time. I believe that people are intrinsically good but that we are selfish beings who are sometimes consumed by the pleasures of life in general. I am just as guilty as the next person because I believe that life is too short to worry about every little consequence to every little action. This turns out to be because of my basic personality. My mother put it best when she said I am incapable of slow, calculated movement and instead I leap into the great unknown. I’ve been doing it since I was a child, and no bumps or bruises could stop me from taking that leap of faith when I thought I could fly. Did I ever actually fly? No, but that moment of pure joy when you first jump and you think, “It’s finally here, I’m finally doing it!” is enough to make me continue ignoring the unending fear that follows when you realize you are plummeting towards an immoveable and solid object. You know the consequences will be dire and hurt like hell, but that one moment of pure bliss is enough for me to continue to ignore all of my best instincts that try to protect myself.
Another point, is the fact that I will always try to find the best in people. I have known some absolutely awful people, and I still try to explain to people that they really are good. I make excuses, because they’ve struggled or because I think they have great potential. No matter how many times they betray that trust, I believe in goodness and to be skeptical of human nature to the point that I believe everyone is entirely self-centered would be far too much for me to handle. It would hurt me so deeply that I believe my soul would fall to pieces before long and I would become a bitter and angry person with no redeemable qualities. I’m also a historian to the core, which I believe means I look at the world through a slightly different lense than most people. I believe in looking at all sides of the story and trying to find the middle ground.
So this is my conundrum: I refuse to acknowledge that some people are selfish to their core and will always betray you, and I have trouble when they do betray me to see that maybe it was not my fault. I immediately examine every interaction I have ever had with this person and try to figure out what I could have done differently to make sure someone else doesn’t betray me again.
Last summer, I was in love with a boy from my past. We had dated before and through a crazy random happenstance he declared his love for me in his car one drunken night after a birthday celebration for his mother. It was one of the greatest nights of my life so far. We continued the party out with some friends and his sister and we held hands and kissed and his hand found my knee under the table and stayed there, like a silent indicator that he wasn’t going anywhere and he was physically here for me. It was this amazing feeling to have this boy who I held so dear to my heart confirming that he was in love with me. We dated for a month or so, but we lived around 2 hours away from each other. I knew that was going to be a complicated situation to be in and would take a certain amount of additional dedication. That additional amount of dedication, alas, was nowhere to be seen. For various reasons (none of which were valid excuses, sans maybe one of them) he would call on nights when we had plans and ditch me. “Sorry, I got stuck in traffic and now I’m home and tired,” he told me once as I sat there shaking my head that I had spent the entire day waiting to hear from him so we could hang out. “Oh, I forgot I had to do laundry. Maybe another time this week?” he had asked as I incredulously scoffed at the gall it must have taken to actually ditch me to do laundry for goodness’ sake. Then there was the final straw, when I finally decided that it was okay that I was feeling incredibly frustrated and irritated by the whole situation. I was going to be leaving in a few hours to see him and he called. As soon as I saw his name I knew exactly what he was going to say and I was entirely right. “Someone called out of work so I’m going to have to stay until 8pm. We can reschedule though.” I called him back that night when he got out of work and explained that you can’t just make plans and break plans. That’s not how it works when you’re in a relationship. My work schedule is very demanding and I was still putting him on the top of my priority list, and I felt like I was at the bottom of his. I should have known that this would be the case when we discussed the zombie apocalypse and I was told I had just made the short list of people he would go to save in case of this particularly fictional emergency. He had said, “It’s about survival! I need these other people first because they would be able to help me rebuild a sustainable environment for a civilization!” Apparently my degree in history and abilities as a young educator was not impressive enough for him, he needed the guys who had training in the military, or the ones who could fix transistor radios. This should have been my immediate red flag, but being the kind of person who sees the best in people, I thought to myself, “Well that’s very pragmatic. Pragmatism is a good thing!” On the phone that night, in my car under the lights lining the small city that I now called home, he decided to break up with me. I was devastated by the idea that this person who had looked me in the eye and said the words that had been sought after my entire life (“I love you, Al”) was actually leaving me when he had made these grand statements that he just assumed we would always get married and be together. As I processed, and in some ways overly so, this information, I began to really think about it. Had he really loved me, or had he said it because he had just always wanted to best me. When we were fourteen, I had broken up with him and broken his heart. Maybe this was payback for me being a heartless teenage girl. As terrible as this betrayal was, I actually hope this is not the case. I hope that he is not as unforgiving and hurtful to punish me for something I did when I was a fourteen year old teenage girl who didn’t know any better. At twenty-seven, a person should know better.
However, betrayal doesn't have to be a traditional romantic heartbreak. I met my best friend when I was in 7th grade. I can’t remember the exact context, but she was walking down the hallways of my junior high school singing at the top of her lungs, for fun. In an uncharacteristic moment of bravery, I began singing with her and we became friends for the next decade. Her unapologetic nature, boldness, and wit were something to be envied by someone like me. I have always been book smart but common sense has always come up short. She was the kind of person who would write next to favorite color, things like dark white and fire engine blue. When my birthday arrived out freshman year, she couldn't find a birthday balloon, so instead she got a balloon that said “It’s a Girl” and implanted words in permanent marker so the balloon read, “It’s [Your Birthday] Girl!” She was a force of nature and one to be reckoned with. Our friendship continued as she went to college across the country and I continued on in my own college career while fulfilling the grand tradition of becoming an adult. When we were 24, her boyfriend and her had moved back to the area and she found herself engaged. She asked me to be a bridesmaid and I told her I would absolutely be delights (and I meant it). She was one of the great loves of my life. She was my best friend and she had found the person she was meant to be with and I could not have been happier for her. A few years later, we found ourselves celebrating her pending nuptials in true Bachelorette Party fashion, and so drinks were plenty and moods were high. Cards were handed out to everyone with challenges and it was a competition to see who could make a bigger ass of themselves during this celebration. My first card said, “Get someone to buy you a drink.” Feeling the boldness that comes with a few drinks, I immediately walked up to a guy and asked politely, “Hey, would you like to buy me a drink?” He immediately replied, “Yes!” and went to a side of the horseshoe shaped bar to get me a whisky on the rocks. The last thing I remember is fulfilling my second card (writing my name on a man’s chest in eyeliner and then posing for a picture to prove that yes, indeed, it had happened), as I slowly imbibed the drink from the random stranger. The next thing I remember was waking up in a heap of blankets on the floor of my hotel room. According to the various accounts, I have pieced together parts of that night. I very suddenly became completely obliterated, as my friends tell it. They decided that I could not continue (as did the people supervising our pub crawl, with good reason). I was apparently belligerent, rude and nightmarish. They got me into a cab with my sister, who had come to pick me up, and I threw up in the cab. When we got to the hotel room we were staying in, my sister had to get a wheelchair to get me upstairs to our room. I spent the rest of the day, curled in a ball and thinking through every scenario possible for the previous night and then I realized the only reasonable explanation for what had happened. I suspected that the random stranger I had asked for a drink had put something in my drink. Unfortunately, by the time I realized this, it was too late for a blood test and for anyone to figure out if it was true, but its the only thing that made sense. We went to the rehearsal dinner and I apologized and tried to make amends for my terrible behavior. I was lectured. I was threatened. I was yelled at. I was shamed. When I shared my suspicions with one of our other friends, I was informed how little it mattered that I was possibly drugged because the only thing that mattered was the perception of everyone else who was there. I was a drunk who couldn't handle her shit. I didn't realize how damaging this situation was for me, psychologically, until quite a bit later. This idea that it was my fault, that I made the mistake, that I just got drunk, has been built into our culture and in itself, my friends believing it instead of believing that something slightly more sinister was at play, was a betrayal. I am one to always acknowledge my faults, and this time, I know it was not normal. This caused a tense period in our friendship, but we eventually moved past everything and tried to salvage what was left. Eventually, she simply stopped returning my phone calls, and sent me a message saying that she had been hurt by my behavior in the past and that she had needed time to think. Still today, I have not heard from her, we have never figured out what it was that I have done or what I could have possibly done to deserve months of silent treatment as adults. This was a new kind of betrayal to me, the kind that goes back in time and takes away the beauty of the friendship you once possessed. So even when I feel nostalgic and look back on my younger days, I feel this immense sadness because somehow, our relationship imploded. It may seem to an outsider that using the word betrayal is very dramatic in this case but I use it very purposely because it was a betrayal for her to not have faith in her friend. It was a betrayal to just give up and not let me defend myself. To be perfectly honest, I think it was a cowards way out.
There are other situations where you may feel silly for feeling betrayed because its someone who is new to your life. This is the situation I found myself in with a certain gentleman. Let’s just put it this way, I met this man at a local watering hole and we hit it off. Although I am not looking for anything serious, the possibility that I could find something serious is something that I find enticing. I found out about a month after meeting him that he has a girlfriend. The reason this was so distressing is because a mutual friend of ours mentioned his girlfriend, saw the shell-shocked look on my face and he stated inquisitively, “You didn't know?” The reason why that is the worst part of the story is because there was a moment when my very good friend, thought that I was capable of being a home-wrecker. This, although a minor betrayal, was a brutal one. For just one second, I had become a thing I could not stand without even the knowledge to protect myself from it. He had used me, and he had not even had the human decency to tell me that he had used me.
The worst betrayals are from people you trust who do something unforgivable. When I was a baby, I had two cousins who were years older than me. They lived in a very abusive situation with a mother who was a terrible disaster. I don’t really know the particulars but I know that I don’t want to know. One day, my cousin led me into a small room that connected the large bedroom that was my parents’ with the very creepy attic with the horsehair plaster crumbling from the walls. I was around the age of 4 or 5, and she proceeded to molest me. I won’t go into details, but just know it was the work of a damaged young girl who had also been molested and didn't think about what she was doing. I suppressed it for a very long time and then when I did finally confront this memory I was so angry. I was so confused and apoplectic that I could never just be a normal kid. I felt like the queen in Hamlet, constantly screaming, “Out, Damn Spot!” but knowing that it would never come out. It would never go away. The worst part of this betrayal came when I was 23 and finally lost it enough that I had to tell my parents what had happened to me. I had been carrying this burden for years on my own because I was determined to not hurt my mother with this. When I told them, I asked her if she could inform my grandmother because I could not take the difficulties of saying it one more time. It was the most brutal moment of my life, watching my mother’s face as I informed her that the one goal she had in life, to raise her kids free from these kinds of sorrows, she had failed to accomplish.
As with all the rest of my stories, this is not about the sadness or anger behind being betrayed. This is about more than that.
Being betrayed by someone means you have three choices. You can either choose the path of anger and rage and be the victim. You can choose the path of the survivor and discuss forgiveness and how grudges are toxic to people. I chose life. I hate to be labeled a victim or a survivor, of which, I am neither. I am a liver. I am a phoenix. Betray me and I will rise from the ashes bigger and brighter and more beautiful than before. I will take this moment in time as just that, a moment. I might meet someone who fits into one of these scenarios, but these situations will never repeat themselves. History never repeats itself that way. There are always different factors that create this moment in time that can never be repeated and never be revived. As much as I would like to relive that moment when that boy told me he loved me and called me by my childhood nickname, I will never get that exact moment back. Why? Because people are not interchangeable and there will never be a moment when he will look at me like he did that night. I will never again curl up with him and watch a movie, or celebrate holidays and Sunday dinners with his entire family. I will never be able to relive those moments of the Bachelorette party and choose a better path. I will never be able to go back and save myself the pain of being a child who was sexually abused. I can look back and regret the fact that I dated this person or that person. I can look back and regret that I went into that small room, or that I took a drink from a stranger who was not in my direct line of sight when buying that drink. I can regret every decision I’ve ever made if you ask me to. The point is I will not. My life is unpredictable, dramatic and for all intents and purposes, my life is pretty remarkable. At the end of the day, you can’t regret the people you have chosen to trust who have betrayed you. Look to the people who, through these betrayals, have always had your back and supported you. While telling my parents was a heart wrenching moment in time, it was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Although I felt broken hearted for a while after the boy I loved left me, it led me to be a stronger person and to realize how much I was worth. I don’t deserve to be someone’s somewhat, I should be someone’s everything. While losing my friend was a terrible series of events, I have learned that sometimes people go through things that are beyond your control and if they don’t want to be there anymore, then focus on the people who do want to be there. Some of us are lucky and benefit from decades on this Earth. Some of us may have a much shorter time. So I choose life. Instead of focusing on anger and frustration and betrayal I will focus on all the ways that my life is a beautiful cacophony of random events. Live large, that way when you are reduced to a small pile of bones, you can at least have the pleasure of knowing that those bones gave it their all.
