Secret thoughts

There's only one person who's ever asked me how I think. I think a lot about how I think. I think about what it would be like to be a mind reader inside my head.

My mind wouldn't make sense at all.

It's not that I think my thoughts are unusual, but that I never finish my thoughts - a trail of half finished sentences whispering through my mind like leaves on familiar winds.

I know that the leaves come from trees I am growing in my garden. Pruning, probing, exploring all things pertaining, they are big trees like Love, with its branches overlapping Gender on one side and Center on the other. I have seen enough leaves at this point to picture these trees.

But a mind reader might not be able to see those trees or read those winds. What I know to be as predictable as the seasons might be a spring day deciding whether or not to rain. A mind reader - or a friend. Only one friend has ever asked me how I think.

---

When I first met Tuukka he was new to Olympia. It was the year I set out to build a new friend group, and I noticed him as just the sort of desperate person I was looking to adopt.

He was strange. Drug addled and self deprecating, with a tendency to ask probing questions, but only reveal some things about himself. He was fragile, unable to sleep or come to games or walk home at night. I decided to treat him like a baby bird. Pick him up, but gently.

He turned out to be a fabulous role player, an amazing musician, and someone who supersedes my love of theology. A valuable ally - and after sufficient time, a friend.

Friendship brought new revelations. He'd tell me there was a girl who didn't like him back. Never a name, but there was only one girl who he consistently photographed - it had to be Kat - I let it be, the mention of her seemed to bring him pain, and I know that pain.

---

Kat and I go back to freshman year, when she lived directly under me in the dorms. Of all the angry letters over my loud sex life, Kat’s was my favorite

“There's more than one person under y’all. Please keep it down.”

She was in love with Schultz who was in love with Chicky who lived on my floor. I thought Kat liked me for a bit there. I look a lot like Schultz, but in the chaos of freshman drama it's hard to tell. Soon I had a girlfriend to have loud sex with. We faded to acquaintance.

Until four years later my housemate, Nauth, came into my room and told me she'd started thinking about this girl, Kat, who she'd liked my Freshman year and had a huge falling out with. She wanted to reach out to her, but how? We talked about it. The following morning I was surprised to hear Kat’s voice coming from Nauth’s bedroom.

“That was quick,” I commented when she had left.

“Yeah, things just worked out that way,” Nauth told me.

“Just so you know,” I said over breakfast, “Tuukka is grieving over Kat - best not to mention her in his presence.”

“Got it,” Nauth said.

---

Tuukka and Nauth were both part of my role playing group that I held every Saturday at our shared house. My concern was twofold, I didn't want Tuukka to have such an emotional response to Nauth that they couldn't play together, and I didn't want to open any old wounds that just seemed to be healing. Time for truth when he wasn't actively in pain.

It wasn't so long after this that I learned that Kat had been in an open relationship with her boyfriend in Hawaii, and that when she told him about Nauth, he freaked out and they swore to be monogamous. Kat still came over and when two people take showers together you make assumptions, whether rightfully I can't say.

The death of that relationship was slow and agonizing, despite my advice that the only good way to end things is to end them.

“Is what we're doing wrong?” Nauth would ask.

“Well, yes - but I understand it - have I ever told you about a girl named Libra?” I would say, and share why I ended it and how.

Then came dark days. I'd come back to find she hadn't moved all day. We'd feed her and get her to bed.

It was sometime around then that Tuukka asked Nauth during a game - “So I heard you and Kat have been hanging out?”

Here it comes, I thought

“Not really,” Nauth lied. They still spent far too much time together.

“Oh,” Tuukka said in that small delicate voice “I was just wondering how she was doing.”

“I don't really know.”

---

“So I learned last night that Nauth had an affair with Kat for a few months after Kat stopped talking to me.

“And after my initial knee jerk reaction last night, the thing that's kind of stuck with me even after I've calmed down is that I asked Nauth about it before, and Nauth lied to me.”

Says a message from Tuukka sent about six months later. I didn't get this message. I got the second half - a curious question.

“I was thinking about your ‘be honest for yourself, lie for others’ thing
Maybe this is an unreasonable question, but hope I can expect an honest answer here

“Have you ever lied to me? Or just not told me something I would have felt some type of way about?”

I try to think of any lies I've told him. I usually remember out front lies because I tell them so rarely. Omissions? Sure. When he came and visited I didn't tell him normal people turn off the tea kettle when it whistles for ten minutes.

“I've definitely never out front lied to you. I do know I'll occasionally lie by omission if I don't think something will serve you or obviously if something isn't mine to share,” I message back.

“Did you know about Nauth and Kat?” He asks. My stomach sinks. I'd forgotten all about that.

“Oh gods, yeah that would be a large lie by omission.

“I actively tried to keep that one from you. I didn't think it would serve you or the cohesion of our group.

“I assume Nauth told you?”

He sidesteps quietly

“I thought we were friends, Pan.

“I'm not upset that the affair happened, but I don't want to be friends with people who would lie to me.

“Maybe that sounds awfully dramatic, but I've trusted you, and to a lesser extent Nauth, with a lot of my heart, you know?”

I know.

At this point I have to leave and tell him so. I have three days until I have to answer somehow. A good amount of time. Enough time for me to think and not just pull from the leaf piles raked for occasions like these.

My thoughts are brief wheelings in the wind, but most of my mind is open sky. Best scenario. . . Silence . . . Could ask forgiveness . . Silence . . . Is important . . . He is valuable to me . . . Silence . . . He played my song . . . Worth the energy . . . Silence . . . Okay.

The first thing I do is assess his worth. Best scenario . . .

[He's not in my life or currently very useful to me. In all likelihood I could sever ties not have to worry about relationship for a while and then in a year or so he'll miss me, realize that it's not as big a deal as he thinks, and reestablish ties.]

Could ask forgiveness . . .

[Second scenario is that I consider him valuable enough to ask forgiveness. This results in loss of power over him, and change of relationship. He would know that threatening the existence of our friendship would get him things he wants. Constantly threatened relationship isn't worth it.]

. . . Is important.

[Relationship is important to me as it currently stands, becomes less valuable the less power I have in it. Less power means more energy spent on behaviors we could have avoided.]

He is valuable though.

[He's smarter than I am, available when I need people for bonfires and games, and it flatters me to have a friend with 800 dollar shoes. He asks me good questions, has a guest room, and introduces me to games and occasionally good music.]

. . . He played my song. . .

• Worth the energy.

[That gift is worth a goodly amount of energy, and really hasn't been repaid. He is more than a valuable asset to the community I build around me. He's worth something to me personally.]

Okay

[Power can be rebuilt. We'll have time later to threaten him that constantly jeopardised relationships won't be tolerated. For now we do whatever it takes to get on talking about it terms.]

Now we set a new question. If this is the path we want to take how do we want to approach it?

Me: “What's it going to take to get back into your good graces?”

Him: “I don't know, this is a fundamental betrayal of trust.”

Me: “I could promise to never lie to you again.” [Bad idea, the boy is fragile and it wouldn't serve the friendship. Besides it's impossible to be completely honest with anyone else anyway. What I say isn't what he hears.]

Him: “You expect me to take the word of a liar?”

Me: Come on, there's a big difference between not telling you something because it's for your own good and breaking an oath. I've never broken an oath [except the one time and that was an accident and I don't remember doing it anyway - except I've made up a memory so maybe I do?]

Him: “You forget that I'm not a baby centered pragmatist like you, I'm a romantic with a tendency to like orthodox certainties and throw around the word ‘flesh prison’ a lot. I'm emotionally hurt and nothing rational will change that.”

Me: Fine. See if you can find a more honest friend. I bet your new boyfriend probably lies to you. Everybody lies.

That could . . . [Have gone better. He probably wouldn't be best approached by pragmatism.]

I wonder if . . . ? [ anyone has secrets specific to me like this? I have all sorts of big secrets that I keep from all sorts of people - All for someone else.]

What even would? [There be to keep from me?]

Shine was cheating on me and that's why she broke up with me.

Graceling was sleeping with even more people. [Nah, I wouldn't be upset. Why would they?]

I have a twin sister just like I always suspected.

Papa is secretly Freez’s father.

Manta was cheating on me? [Huh, it all seems to be cheating. I don't know why Manta would lie either.]

Nauth is sleeping with Shine [Ooh, I like this one. This is analogous and my response?]

I wouldn't want to know.

So then why . . .

[. . . Is my having kept this from him a bad thing? I wouldn't want to have to compare myself to Nauth every time. Wonder what she has that I lack. I would be served by that lack of knowledge.]

Do unto others

[As you would have done to you. I've always stated that I will lie without hesitation, and if you think that means just for you, and not to you for someone else, you aren't thinking this through. I didn't compromise any moral I hold, or any expectation I cultivate. I didn't break character and I have always claimed to be this character. He should know!]

Won't serve him to hear that though.

How to explain

[ it to him. He obviously didn't know. I failed to convey that facet of my nature, and he's mono red romantic - a being of emotion and impulse. He feels betrayed and no rationalization of how it was for the best is going to change anything.]

Just apologize and hope . . . ?

[For the best? What am I apologizing for? I'm sorry that your assessment doesn't match mine? I'm sorry something I did, that was totally right by the way, is causing you grief? Those are true, but I'm not sorry I lied to you and I'd do it again if the situation came up again. You gave me your heart and this it's what I do with people's hearts, I protect them.]

Damn, I've stopped feeling . . . [Repentant] -(the word being too large to pronounce in my head)

---

When he asked me how I think, I told but didn't show. My thoughts enclosed in the opaque cage of my skull - I wish I lived in a world where we didn't have secrets. I wish it so hard that I try not to lie for myself anymore.

If I have an equivalent of a flesh prison - I,  the animist who makes no distinction between body and soul. All matter light made manifest - it is this separation of who I am from who I appear to be.

My first girlfriend and I decided to share facebook passwords. It was so fun to see what she had said about me, and share my uninhibited self as I appeared to everyone else - with her.

Then when the night came when I needed it to end I reached out to a mutual friend of ours and she talked me through it - told me it was okay, and that my reasons for leaving were real.

Then she asked me “Please don't tell her I said that - she would never forgive me.”

And I went and changed my Facebook password and chose to log out everyone else. Because now suddenly there was something she couldn't see.

This is something worth knowing. I try to be someone you can trust with your secrets, but that also means I keep secrets from you as well.

And for that I am sorry.