▸ Column · Modern-day Midgard — Loki fielding correspondence from mortals in a contemporary urban setting, Thor cutting in from close enough to read over his shoulder.
LOKI replies.
The letter
My new superior at work is the most unhurried sort of kind man, and it is undoing me. He noticed I had gone without eating for three days running and left food on my desk with a note — just that I matter. I had to go and hide somewhere to stop shaking. My father's version of giving was always currency, always a prelude to something being taken away, and my body has not learned the difference between a gift and an opening bid. I snapped at him — told him I didn't need minding — and the look that crossed his face made me feel exactly like the creature I was raised expecting to become. I am in my mid-thirties and I do not know how to let a genuinely decent person be decent without immediately bracing for what comes next. How do I stop making weapons out of the people who are finally safe?
Loki replies
"The monster they told you you'd become." That phrase in particular. I have some experience there — I was not called one outright, not by the king who took me in, but the word was always in the space between what he said and what he omitted, which I learned only decades too late. I spent an embarrassingly long portion of my life performing the creature he feared I'd become. It is remarkable what one inhabits simply to prove someone correctly wrong.
You wept somewhere private over a sandwich. The part of you that wept is not the monster.
The snap — I know that snap. That is armor misfiring, which is both better and worse than cruelty: better because it isn't what you meant, worse because the decent man with the note cannot tell the difference from where he's standing. I learned to read every gift as the opening move of a longer game, because in my experience it was. My mother was the notable exception — the one person who offered me something without a visible bill attached. I received her kindness badly and sideways for most of the time I had with her, and then the time ran out.
So. The small true apology is "I received that badly." Not the whole history. Not a confessional. Just enough to close what the snap opened. Then carry the rest inward — the father, the shaking, all of it. That is not his to hold. It is yours.
You are not becoming what they promised. You're just very late to learning the hiding place is optional.
— Loki
Thor weighs in
My brother just counseled you to apologize and then carry the wound inward. I want to name what that advice is, because I have watched him follow it for an age: it is how a man builds himself a very quiet, very cold palace. The note on your desk did not say you might matter, contingent on performance. It said you matter. He put that in writing with nothing to gain. He already offered to carry some of this — that is what those words mean from a man like that. My brother says seal the rest inside. I say the wall after the apology is still a wall, and a man who noticed you hadn't eaten in three days would, I think, prefer the door to stay open. Give him the apology. Then trust the note enough not to re-lock the room.
— Thor
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