I don’t like rivers much. Not because one of them drowned my brother, mind you. Rather, it’s because I’ve been sold down a few of them over the years.
O.K., so I don’t like being sold down the river. It’s not fun. I don’t think there’s really a worse feeling on earth to have someone you trust completely sell you out.
The first time happened oh so many years ago. I had started a non-profit group along with my pirate mates Waterrat and Black Bart. We spent an entire summer dreaming up a new pirate group in Seattle that would provide a safe harbor for the malcontents in the Seafair Pirates who wanted out of the shenanigans they called a club. Things had gone from bad to worse until it was no longer fun to play pirate. Politics, not piracy, had won.
Things were great in the beginning. But then one of my best friends started thinking with the wrong head. This can be a good or bad thing, as you know. There is only so much blood in a man’s body and it can only flow to one head at a time. His blood was below decks and its flow would send me down the river of no return.
Yes, I was sold down the river. Blindsided, too. Without a word from my so called best friend, I was beached. In pirate parlance, that means I was marooned, suspended from the group I created.
Now, I can take my medicine like a big boy. But only if there is a prescription for it. In creating the group, we had purposely removed all the trial nonsense the Seafair Pirates had, so there was no beaching, no suspensions. You were either in or you were out and we were neither.
Suffice it to say that it was a very ugly scene. That happens when you get sold down the river. You’re cast adrift and there’s no way you can make it back up to the safety of what was once familiar surroundings to you. You simply must go with the current, not quite knowing where you will end up.
I wish that was the only time this had ever happened in my life, but it wasn’t. I sometimes think I have “C.O.D.” tattooed on my back or something because it seems to keep happening, and not always with friends.
Loves in your life can do the same thing. In some respects, it can be even worse. You give your heart and soul to them, all in the hopes that they say those three magical words to you, “I love you.” I can safely say that there aren’t three better words on this earth. Four perhaps, but not three.
I have sought these words many times in my life. I have sold my own self down the river a time or two just to hear them. I’ve pretended I like cats, ballet, Celtic Thunder, the soundtrack of Les Miserables and an assortment of other oddities that my close friends know are total B.S. But I truly believe them at the time. Yes, they do turn out to be B.S., but I really wanted that other person to love me.
And then somewhere down the line, the awful truth comes out. I have made plans to totally change my life (and sometimes I do), only to find out that while I was a nice guy, I wasn’t their nice guy.
I personally don’t know how you can ever say that falling in love with someone was an error on your part. I have to wonder what goes on in a person’s head. One moment, they have fallen madly in love with you, and the next moment you’re getting the old heave-ho, often without warning.
Yes, sold down the river. As anyone who has had their heart ripped out and stomped on, you know the feeling. There’s nothing worse. I have been punched in the face and gut, I have been stranded in the middle of nowhere, I have been within a hair’s breadth of being homeless, dined on Top Ramen for an entire month at a time and drove a Pinto. And I can tell you that there is nothing more painful than giving someone else your love freely and having it given back to you, sometimes hat in hand.
If I sound bitter, I’m not. As you all know, I still love love. And I still throw myself out there in the fracas we call relationships, whether it’s a new friend or a new love.
And while it doesn’t shake my faith in love, it does a number on my ability to trust. I know that you can’t take someone at their word every time, but when you share those three words between you, I think there is some obligation to use them carefully and precisely. We’re talking about someone’s heart here, which is an amazing gift that is also amazingly fragile.
I would like to think that when you give it to someone else, they take good care of it, as if it’s their own because really, it is. It’s not something anyone gives lightly, like a a bouquet of flowers because you had a tiff about some stupid thing. It’s a heart. Your heart.
I have learned a valuable lesson on the river. It isn’t always a river of no return. Sometimes you get caught up in some pretty scary rapids, perhaps you even get caught in an undertow that pulls you down to the point where you’re just going to drown in sadness and despair. But eventually, you come back to the surface. You stop struggling against the current that had you thinking you can go back to the way things used to be. Instead, you just take a deep breath and relax, believing that the place you’re going is a better place. And usually it is.
Slowly, the current starts to flow again and we move on. We find a new love, someone who treasures our heart as much as we do. And that makes the whole journey worthwhile.
In the Emerald City, enjoying calm waters and smooth sailing for a change,
– Robb