Just Some Musings on Illusions and Broken Faith

Have you ever thought you knew somebody pretty well and then they do something that shocks the living daylights out of you? And then you wonder if they just suddenly changed or if you never knew them in the first place?

This has happened over and over during my life, and the first few dramatic times, it threw me for a loop. I mean really upset me. Since I'm not particularly fond of change, once I got to know somebody, if they did something completely unexpected it left me kind of reeling, as if the world was wobbling erratically. One of the first times I can remember this happening was as a freshman in high school. It was a trivial thing, really. I was on my way to one of those dreaded pep assemblies with some of my friends. We all still had our books, but since my locker was way back the other direction, one of my friends let me use her locker to dump my stuff in. I gratefully accepted her offer and headed off to the assembly without another thought. Later in the day, I went back to get my stuff, which had "mysteriously" disappeared. Both of the girls who shared the locker (and were my good friends) denied knowing what had happened to it, even questioning if I hadn't made a mistake because they didn't remember it being there at all.

It was like entering the twilight zone.

It only got worse; I did eventually find my folder (though partially destroyed) and my books in the lost and found. And another girl from our group confidentially told me that my supposed friends had simply tossed my things from the locker into the hallway and left them there. I was heartbroken and disillusioned. Could you really trust anybody? Who were these girls after all?

Over time, I've come to realize that people are not static robots who are programmed to be the same forever. Plus, we all have multiple sides to our personalities, and we don't always show them to everyone. And no matter how much I might wish otherwise, nobody's perfect.

I remember the first time I realized I didn't know my husband as well as I thought. Granted, he wasn't my husband then, but we had been engaged for several months. I had him pegged as a friendly, caring, goofy guy who at heart was a peacemaker.

Hah!!!

It shocked me the day we were at his parents' apartment, and he nearly got into a fight with a drunk guy who didn't want us to park in "his" parking spot. I had never seen that dominating, argumentative side of him! (And for those of you that don't believe me, yes, Terence does have that side. There's a part of him you don't want to cross. He couldn't be a cop if it wasn't in there.)

It makes me wonder when things I've done have surprised somebody else with an apparent personality change. Hopefully, nobody out there feels I betrayed them. Well, a couple of the guys I broke up with probably feel that way. And I know my side of the story, and I know I felt I couldn't act any other way, it was something that had to be done if I was going to be true to myself.

Hmm, I wonder what my freshman friends' side of the story was? Did they have a good explanation from their point of view for treating me like that?

Have you ever betrayed someone and felt like you had no choice? Or that it was the right thing to do?