Vachon Imagined

I was largely raised by my grandfather, though many others participated in the raising of me. They each had their role, but I made my grandfather into a god. And I’m sure he enjoyed it. Who wouldn’t?

To a child, everything is majestic. Even suffering has a kind of grandeur because it is honest. It is real. It is happening. A child does not question their impulse to explore, to know, to discover. They simply move toward life.

Then someone comes along and says, “No. Don’t do that.”

Suddenly the child wonders if the impulse itself is wrong. Maybe curiosity is sinful. Maybe the desire to know is dangerous. Maybe something inside them cannot be trusted.

Of course, none of this is true.

But I do not have to tell you that. You already know it by the way you judge your own mind, the way you question yourself, the way you argue with your own experience. This conditioning is not merely a mistake. It is part of the journey. A great plan, perhaps, for finding your way back to a love that sometimes says yes and sometimes says no.

My grandfather taught me to love people and to help them no matter what. He was raised during the Great Depression. He admired men of valor, men who believed you kept going regardless of hardship, and above all, that you served the little man.

I inherited that belief.

Somewhere along the way, however, something became distorted.

What I heard was not merely, “Love people.”

What I heard was, “Stay.”

Stay when people hurt you.

Stay when they use you.

Stay when they take more than they give.

Stay because you are obligated.

And if you leave, you are a bad person.

No child wants to be bad.

Yet children often suffer not because of the price of being bad, but because of the conflict of trying to be good.

The prison was never goodness or badness. The prison was judgment itself.

The exhausting part is not putting down the burden. The exhausting part is carrying it year after year.

There were people in my life—one in particular—to whom I remained fiercely loyal. I thought loyalty meant availability. I thought love meant enduring. I thought goodness meant staying.

Meanwhile, I was being harmed.

This matters because it shaped how I saw the world. And whether we realize it or not, these hidden beliefs shape how all of us see the world.

What I eventually learned is that saying no to someone who is hurting you can be one of the most loving acts imaginable.

Not because it punishes them.

Because it frees both of you.

It frees you from becoming a participant in your own suffering. And it frees them from being protected from the consequences of their choices.

They do not need you to be their teacher, their savior, or their sacrifice.

Life will teach them.

Just as life teaches us all.

We are not here to carry one another indefinitely. We are here to learn what love is.

And sometimes the deepest expression of love is not a yes.

Sometimes love looks someone directly in the eye and says, “No.”

And in that no, both people are given the chance to become free.