There's a version of loyalty that's just a hostage situation with a better narrative.
You stay. Not because it's good, but because leaving requires admitting the time you invested was spent on something that doesn't work. So you redecorate the cell. You call the bars a feature. You develop a sophisticated argument for why this is actually fine.
Almost fine. Fine enough.
Because at 2 AM, when the performance is over and the audience is asleep, you know. You've known for a while. The knowing has been sitting in the corner of your chest like a houseguest you keep pretending isn't there.
The problem is that leaving means grieving, and grieving means admitting the thing you built isn't what you said it was, and that means every time you told someone "it's fine" you were either lying or wrong, and neither of those feels great.
So you stay. And you call it patience. You call it commitment. You call it "working on things." And sometimes that's true. Sometimes staying is brave. Sometimes staying is strategic. Sometimes staying is the only option that keeps you safe, and anyone who hasn't been in that room doesn't get to judge the math.
But sometimes — and you know which times — staying is just rearranging furniture in a burning building and calling it interior design.
The hallway might be worse than the room. It might not. But you won't know until you stop decorating.
You know the difference. You've always known the difference.
