Tag: betrayal

  • Choose your company…wisely

    Choose your company…wisely

    Choose your company carefully.

    The peace of mind and sense of belonging for which you yearn could easily turn out to be the reason for your anguish.

    There is rarely a day that passes without me reading or hearing about someone who invested years, if not decades of their life, to people who were not invested in the relationship.

    When the reality of that betrayal finally hits home, it destroys our spirit and convinces us that we’ve sacrificed the best years of our life while having nothing more to look forward to.

    Nothing could be further from the truth.

    The same way we were able to create beauty in such a desolate landscape, we must recognise that the best of us that we gave was simply the truth of who we were. And are.

    The moment we discard that because it was discarded by an ingrate who was looking for servitude of their ego when they could have had love for their essence, we become ingrates just like them.

    Don’t trade who you are for who they were. It’s never a fair trade. You owe yourself more than that.

    And self-pity will only ever prevent you from being true to yourself.

    Breathe, beloved…even when that breath threatens to prolong the agony of your life. Breathe. And embrace the beauty of who you are despite the ugly of who they were.

    That’s how we take back the gift that they discarded so that we may be able find a more fitting recipient.

    As long as you’re breathing, there’s always hope.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • The pain of being empty

    The pain of being empty

    When we’re overcome with the pain of betrayal, or loss, our focus is often on what we no longer have, rather than the gaping hole that it left in our soul.

    We try to reconcile the events or the mysteries that led up to that moment when what we cherished was suddenly taken.

    Sometimes taken by fate, but at other times taken by force.

    We feel violated when we’re left vacant. When the space we once reserved for one we cherished was abandoned without reason, or for all the wrong reasons.

    When the reasons are easily overcome, if only they’d be willing to overcome it with us.

    When we see in them what they refuse to see in themselves.

    Or when they give up hope for what they need from fear of losing it, again. So they protect themselves from us, not because of who we are, but because of how they were betrayed before us.

    That’s when we need to sit quietly with that gaping hole and find in it the peace that absence promises. It’s a peace found in the absence of expectation, or in the presence of calm.

    But calm is elusive when we’re fighting to get back what is not ours to claim. That’s when pain sets in. That’s when the gaping hole becomes a suffocating mess, rather than a passing anguish.

    Be still, beloved. Be composed. Be at peace knowing that the best of you will never be good enough for those who are not good enough for themselves.

    Their demons are your pain only because you see the beauty that they never tasted.

    Don’t give up that beauty because of their bitter tongue. Their bitterness is theirs to savour, and yours to abandon. Breathe…

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Tainting a beautiful soul

    Tainting a beautiful soul

    Betrayal of trust always cuts deeper than any other wound that we endure in life.

    A trust of the heart is an offering of the most sacred parts of who we are to those whom we believe will add to its beauty, and its peace.

    When it is held sacred by the ones with whom we share it, it explodes into fountains of light, beautifying everything that it touches…including the hurts of the past.

    When it is treated flippantly, it turns into caves of darkness, offering us protection from the shame of having had our sanctity violated by one so dear.

    From deep within that cave, any light that enters threatens to disembowel what little dignity we have left.

    Sometimes we flirt with that light, believing that it’s still possible to have the remnants of light in our soul join in the splendour of the beauty that we know is possible.

    For a while, we grow bold, believing that the sanctity of us may yet be cherished by another. Until we’re reminded that it is that same trust that created the space for the darkness of another to snuff out our light.

    So we withdraw. Any promises made to that point fade from view, and our trust becomes seasonal. Turning us into the darkness that seeks to destroy someone else’s light before they get a chance to destroy our own. Again.

    It’s an unintended vengeance against other than the brute that ravaged our soul. But it carries with it the promise of safety, and the promise of once more being whole.

    Thus, an unfulfilled vengeance, shreds a beautiful soul.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • A sacred trust

    A sacred trust

    Mark Twain once said something about there being two days that are important in your life. The day you’re born, and the day you find out why. I think there’s a third day that matters as much as the other two. The day you realise that your why only matters to you, and no one else.

    There’s a sacred trust that is unspoken but governs the hearts of everyone. That trust is created in moments when we honour our why in servitude of others. Everyone has this inclination. To serve as best as they can, to honour that trust that no one speaks of.

    A rare few, or perhaps more than that, invest that servitude in those who are true to their why. In return, the trust is fulfilled, but still unspoken. The only evidence of its fulfilment is the fulfilment they feel when their sincere servitude is honoured in kind.

    But what of those who invested it in ones who dishonour their why? Worse still, what if your why is to give hope to those who have given up hope in themselves?

    The ones in need of hope grab at the hints of its arrival without any concern for its origin. It is not the being attached to the outstretched hand that matters. Only what that hand contains.

    In that moment of giving, when something is gained by the hopeless, something is lost by the hopeful. Until eventually, the scale tips beyond its balance, and the hopeful become the hopeless. That’s when that sacred trust is broken, often beyond repair.

    Without trust, all that’s left is faith. Faith denies us the right to give up. Caught between the absence of trust, fading hope, and a fragile faith, the struggle of being human is born. And in that desecrated space, angels and demons are formed.

    If there is enough hope left in the cup, it fuels the endeavour to remain true to our why. But if the cup of hope is empty, faith settles in quietly, hope exits gracefully, and trust is abandoned, finally. Leaving the one caught in that conflict feeling conflicted, painfully aware of the emptiness that the tainted sanctity of that trust left, while knowing that faith always demands more.

    Perhaps faith is not our saving grace from the trials of life. Perhaps faith itself is the trial.

  • Chasing ghosts

    Chasing ghosts

    Of the multiple lifetimes that I’ve endured, reality flirts between the beauty that I saw, and the ugly that I experienced. Sanity was relegated to an after thought when what I saw was a vision uniquely experienced by me. Too real to dismiss, but too fantastical to be believed.

    It’s the belief that I need to share it with others that taints the experience. But I often wonder if it’s really a belief, or is it a dictate of nature that I will remain incomplete if my experience remains my own. Is the purpose of life not to share our wonders with others?

    The pervasiveness of ugly has revealed the ugly side of ugly to me in moments when I was distracted by the beauty of a being. My fixation on beauty was never enough to turn their gaze away from the ugly that gripped their lives. Unfulfilled vengeance shreds a soul with the promise of making it whole.

    Fighting the shredding has left me chasing their ghosts of beauty while they invested in the ugly of being. But my ghosts, despite being beyond reach for an embrace, are mine to behold, and mine to court. Offering shards of light into their darkness, teasing them into the light for a few brief, magical moments, before they recede again, the fear of the light turning to darkness echoing the horror of hopes so often destroyed by the ugly of their past.

    This tug of war. This wretch between beauty and pain. If not for the beauty of the ghosts, sublimely serene and mesmerisingly aching with the promise of peace, succumbing to their ugly would have overtaken my tender soul. But tenderness is not formed through frailty. It is the deepest gashes that revealed the tenderness within, without which the hardened crust of my contact with the world would have had me convinced that my ghosts were mere apparitions, and their ugly was the only truth.

    The ghosts of the betrayers have unwittingly gifted me with the vision that they spurned. A vision of wondrous enchantment, seeing the tenderness of their soul, while they focus on the crust. Hope feels like a threat when the lifetimes that nag at my back remind me of the many occasions on which the ghosts were defeated, and the crust grew thicker over the beauty that I courted.

    Until now. Until my latest skirmishes with their darkness revealed an intensity of light so beautifully complete, that my strongest resolve to abandon it proves futile. A new tug of war has been birthed. This time, between my resolve to block out the ghosts and the beauty that they keep revealing in the silent, taunted moments when the world is asleep, and my unfailing desire to surrender to the ghost before I give up my own.

    The end is not near enough, and peace too far away.

  • A silent betrayal

    A silent betrayal

    The betrayal of trust is not always due to blatant acts of dishonesty.

    Most often, it’s the silence or the restraint from a loved one when their words or their embrace is most needed.

    It’s the shrug when we reach out to them or offer them support, or the deliberate obliviousness when we express our need for them.

    It’s the trust that bonds hearts that is more fragile than the intellectual trust.

    Reconciling dishonesty is easy because we have tangible evidence to work with.

    Understanding what’s in someone’s heart when they keep it a secret, or when they become subdued after having been expressive, leads to more anguish than any lie of the tongue.

    It is the not knowing that tortures and tests the trust we once placed in someone, especially when all the evidence conflicts with their claims.

    That’s when breathing becomes a labour in search of love, and exhaling feels pointless.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • My silent scream

    My silent scream

    When rage is all you have left in you, know that you’ve surrendered yourself to the betrayal of the world.

    When rage becomes a silent scream or a deliberate protest, despite your best intentions, you are still defined by that betrayal.

    When rage colours your view of the world, you see demons in angels, and persecution in love, because they both, the angels and the love, carry with them the threat of a broken trust.

    Worse still, when rage defines your response to life, you not only reject anything that demands trust, but you strike preemptively at the hint of what you once courted, hurting the ones invested in your peace.

    When we view the world through angry eyes, innocence is tainted, sincerity appears as manipulation, and affection feels like a self-serving act of the one offering it.

    Discarding the good doesn’t only deny you that good, it also creates space for the festering wounds of the past to contaminate even more beauty and innocence that once filled those spaces.

    Breathe, beloved…

    Just breathe…

    Don’t let the betrayers of your past cause you to betray your future.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Thus, is love lost

    Thus, is love lost

    In affection, we focus on our beauty

    In rejection, we focus on our deficiencies

    Perhaps that’s why the world is so harsh

    Too many are waiting for their deficiencies to be accepted before they share their beauty

    Or need their grievances with one to be compensated before they accept the beauty of another.

    Each time we wait for the past to be redressed before

    we invest in the future

    We are discarding the future in favour of the very past we wish we could leave behind

    Thus is the gift of love discarded

    And bitterness courted.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock