Loyalty Is Not My Strong Suit

[Deciding to put this post up was a really hard choice to make. It may well get me in trouble. But I no longer have the patience to apologise for having the same emotions as everyone else. Too often I feel like the majority of people who know me attempt to hold me to a higher standard of behavior than others, and find the fact that I occasionally get angry to be unforgivable. I do not find this an acceptable way to think; I am just a girl like any other, and I too have my bad periods.]


Well, I just lived through what was possibly the most awkward family dinner ever. Well, perhaps not ever, but certainly the most awkward one I've had. So awkward, in fact, that I excused myself and went to bathe and go to bed before my family had even left, and I NEVER do that. I always feel dinner guests are a reponsibility to be taken seriously, and would never dream of reading a book or watching TV when they're here, or leaving before they do. Even when they're family. The last time I can remember disappearing from a family dinner when guests were still there was my grandmother's 80th birthday party, when I was about 13, when I had really bad sunstroke and went to bed at 7.30 because I couldn't keep my eyes open.

A couple of my family members are angry with me. Extremely, icily angry. And I'm not sure why, except that I can only assume that it's something to do with the words I had with someone two weeks ago. This is very disorienting for me, because they are some of the nicest, most polite people I know. In five years I've never known them to be anything less than gracious. Yet today nobody greeted me with a hug as they always do. When I hugged them, they stood stiffly, with their arms down by their sides. Nobody commented on my new Jane Norman skirt, which I wore specially for dinner. I was spoken to directly about five times throughout the whole dinner, and always in short staccato sentences, and when my mom pointed out the skirt and said, "Isn't it nice?" (as mom does) it took at least five seconds of silence to say, "Yes." No other comment, no, "Oh, it's beautiful," the way she always has in the past - just "yes".

I don't know if my mom noticed this or not. Sometimes she's quite observant, and other times she doesn't notice a damn thing. She is, however, a keep-the-peace-at-all-costs type of person, and if I mention it to her and she didn't notice, then chances are she'll suggest that perhaps I was imagining things, or making them seem worse than they are. Maybe she just had a bad day. Maybe you're being too cynical. Mom loves to look on the bright side, even when it's totally unrealistic.

I tell her frequently that what I have is not cynicism, it's pattern recognition. I'm an empath, and I'm a profiler, and between the two of those it's near-on impossible to hide your emotions from me. I know people. I know what they think, and more importantly, I know what they feel. I know that when Oli uses a full stop at the end of a text message it means he's hurting or mad about something, and is putting extra emphasis on his words the way he'd use a clipped tone if they were vocal. I know that when I ask a date where he went to college and he tells me, "Boston - well, Cambridge actually," that what he means is, I went to Harvard, and I want you to know I went to Harvard, but I also want to sound modest like I don't think it's a big deal. And I know that when a person takes five seconds to respond to a yes / no question like, "Isn't it nice?" it either means they're preoccupied by something, they disagree and don't know how to say it, or they're angry and don't want to pay you a compliment.

My family, at least that side of it, are fiercely loyal and protective of their own. Make something that can even be faintly construed as an attack on one of them, and you bring down the wrath of everybody on you. Evidently my disagreement - it wasn't even a real argument, for pete's sake - has now been viewed as an attack.


I cannot express how sad this makes me, or how confused. An adult should be able to have a disagreement, even an argument, with another adult without bringing down the wrath of everyone they know on their head.


I just can't fathom this, because I wasn't raised this way. Mom always taught me that the ability to view a situation from all sides is much more important than blind loyalty. We are not people who jump into arguments. We are not people who bitch about things or hold grudges on another person's behalf. One of the things that precipitated my yelling a few days ago [In the post titled "Sati Loses Her Temper," which I did not post here] was her foaming at the mouth to go and cuss at LOML for all the times he's allegedly let me down, and then inviting me to come to a girls' night in and bitch about him, "to make [me] feel better". To which my initial (unvoiced) response was, Do you know me AT ALL?


If I have a problem with a person, I will bring it up with them. I do not want you (and this is the generic "you") to get involved. I do not want to meet up with you and say nasty things about them, because I do not think nasty things about them. Irritation, even anger, are temporary states; being pissed at someone for behaving badly does not mean I think they're a bad person. The absolute last thing I need is you sticking your head into things and stirring the pot. I'm sorry that YOU are angry on my behalf, especially when *I* am not angry about the situation, but your anger is your own, and is not my business. The only involvement I am willing to have with it is to suggest that you think carefully about why you are so eager to see, and react to, problems that need not concern you, or even problems that are entirely in your mind.


If you want me to get involved in your problems with another person, you are looking in the wrong place. I will defend a person who I truly feel is being attacked, whether verbally or physically, and I will speak out when I see something that I view as being morally wrong. I will not insert myself into a disagreement between two (or more) adults. I will not agree with blanket statements about people who I either do not know, or know and have no personal problems with. I will not attack a person's character simply because I disagree with their behavior. I will not change my behavior towards a person I like because you are having a problem with them. I will not automatically agree with you because you are my friend, unless I *actually* agree. I will empathise with your pain, self-inflicted or not, but I will not stand with you while you attempt to inflict it on others to make yourself feel better, regardless of whether or not they deserve it.


I am not a loyal person. My loyalty is to my own sense of right and wrong, not to people. There are a handful of people that I will go to the mattresses for, but the Catch-22 is that those people would probably never ask me to.


I see too much, feel too much, to be able to view another person as an enemy. With very few exceptions, I can always see the other person's side. They have their story, just as you do. I am them, just as much as I am you. And that means that I cannot, or will not, attack them. I may disagree with things that they do, but I will not make harsh judgements on the people underneath the behaviors, not when I can see and feel what motivates them.


And if that makes me a bad friend? So be it.


What type of person are you? Do you stand by your friends and family whether you agree with them or not, or do you put your own morals first? Do you fight, mediate, or stay out of things altogether?