Stoics Survive

I once had a boss 
I foolishly trusted 
who often complimented me, 
impressed by my stoicism. 

I thanked him 
but wondered: 
How else is one 
whose thoughts are complex 
with imaginative insights 
and intense feelings 
to survive this life? 

We complemented each other 
or so I thought or was led to believe. 
Either I was mistaken or misused. 
Loyalty is not always a two-way street 
and even a brilliant mind can be deceived. 

Many years later, 
after two decades 
of serving his business, 
making it successful 
beyond his accountant’s dreams, 
he laid me off along with others 
when the economy went soft, 
rather than personally sacrifice 
and make fewer thousands of dollars 
of the millions I had made possible — 
despite years of assurances 
that I would always have a place. 

I believed his word because 
I had always earned far more 
than just my paycheck. 

I ceaselessly worked 
to protect and grow 
the business despite 
his often unwise, peculiar 
judgment that elevated 
feckless, fatuous misfits 
to undeserved positions 
of incompetent power. 

For twenty long years 
I had the business’s back 
although it turned 
out not to have mine. 

I should have suspected 
his word to be “as worthless 
as the paper it was written on.” 
He was inconstant as beach sand 
directed wherever wind, water 
or random passing footsteps took him. 
Even so, I was dedicated 
to his business despite 
lacking firm ground to stand upon. 

After it all ended, I found 
even stoics can be broken, 
when old, weak, and betrayed. 
Peace of mind can be shattered 
when worries overflow sanity’s dam 
drowning you in feelings of insecurity 
for life’s necessities: food and shelter. 

That two-headed monstrous demon, 
Anxiety and Depression, 
can crush your spirit, 
drag you to its cave, 
drop you into that pit 
of darkness, Despair. 

Sometimes the kind, gentle, agreeable, 
almost-always-helpful man must die 
so that some part of him might live on. 

Many seasons later, 
the realization: 
He will die unforgiven 
and forever in my debt, 
restored a version 
of myself and my stoicism 
as I exiled him to a place 
where memories fade, the wasteland 
of broken words and disgraced honor. 

I only wish 
I had not needed 
to turn my heart 
into a frozen stone 
in order to go on 
but such is life 
among serpents.