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 Loyalty

I no longer have this deformed ugly sick abusive thing hanging on to me sucking the life out of me.



I highly prefer to have loyalty but I don’t have to. Loyalty is not unconditional love, it’s frank conversation and willingness to compromise. The constant fear of being abandoned as a child, and dumped as an adult is the constant cortisol that is high blood pressure, strokes, cancer. 

All of my family relationships and all of my romantic or sexual relationships have been missing that key ingredient of loyalty. The key words of should, must, have to, and need are real in this situation; if I don’t have it I’ll die.

So I walked away from them, in some cases they dumped me for suggesting we have an honest conversation, asking for love and understanding they couldn’t give, smearing as they walked out the door.

Frustration, bitterness, and resentment are what they leave behind. 

Overvalue, undervalue, dump, smear. They used various conditions for the undervalue, usually it's been my lack of money though recently they all seem to have the rich ex they can’t divorce or they’ll be cut off and so they can’t have a relationship with me because then they’ll be cut off. 

So if asked what my greatest fault is in a job interview, I’d say I’m loyal to a fault, but it’s not true, it’s actually my greatest strength. I’m loyal to myself, so that’s the cure for procrastination, which is the cure for everything: keeping promises to myself. So I walk away from shitty relationships now.

My dying brother asked me in a fit of desperation how I changed my life. At that time I was leaving poverty, finishing an art degree, in a long term relationship, and owned a house with all the middle class goodies which is what he really meant. He was overvaluing me in order to hook me in to care for him. He had a stroke a few days later and died so I dodged that particular bullet. 

So I grieved. As I paid less attention to my spouse-partner she dumped me the way a former live-in lover did when my Mom died. The axe was always there hanging by some conditional thread. Recovery is not allowed it appears.

So now I have a guaranteed income, housing and live alone independently.  My long sought after loyal relationship is my relationship with myself. I no longer have this deformed ugly sick abusive thing hanging on to me sucking the life out of me.
Jerald is a Canadian visual artist, educator and essayist with a focus on personal history through the lens of REBT, rational emotive behavioural therapy, the work of Dr. Albert Ellis. After a debilitating stroke in 2017, he re-tuned his studio to write and explore creating/editing time based art. He has since published 12 books of personal essays and photo-based artwork, the most recent published title Intimate Writings A Living Autobiography “Warning, confidential matters will be discussed.”was released in the winter 2024. His website is jeraldblackstock.ca

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