Jesse Teller

A knife was made to cut. A gun was made to shoot. I was made to protect. In the worst years of my life, when I was a boy of about six or seven, I came about as a result of training. See my father wanted a bodyguard for the only thing he loved on Earth, my sister. He wanted someone who would put their life at risk to save his little girl. So he created a bodyguard of his son.

He began with horrid physical and mental abuse. That is not why I am writing this. I am not here to regale you with sick and demented stories of child abuse. I have told those stories way too many times to people who are not better for it. I will not attack you with tales of how ugly the world can be.

Part of the mental abuse was programming me to believe there was no one in the world as important as my sister. So when I was out, when I was in control, I was concentrating on one thing and one thing only. Her safety. In all its forms. Her physical safety, of course, but also her emotional and mental safety. I took the blame for crimes she committed at my mother’s. I listened to stories about how horrible the world was treating her and said nothing of the world’s treatment of me. I stepped in when she picked fights at school.

When the truth came out as to what he was doing to her, I sat on the stories of what he was doing to me. I told no one I was suffering the same abuse and worse. She was the one who had been wronged. She was the one who deserved justice, because all he had done to me was train me to serve her. And to take the horrible things he couldn’t let himself do to her. I sought no justice for myself. I did not hate him for what he did to me. I hated him for what he did to her.

When we discovered our shattered mind, we were in therapy. In the course of the therapy I learned many things about the world and the people in it. I learned a lot about what happened to me and I learned a lot about the people I called family. One of the many decisions I had to make was who I was to let into my life. My mother and her family were out for things they were doing to all of us, especially Servant and Shadow. My brother was out for his evil deeds. So we looked at Lisa, my sister. She had been raised knowing she was more important than me. She was my master. She knew it. It was fact. So one day she called our home and we had “the talk” with her. We told her if she was going to be in our life, she was going to have to make some tough decisions.

One, she had to walk away from my father’s family for good. No contact ever again with the man who had hurt us so badly. She said she could do it. I knew that was bullshit. I knew she would be drawn to him forever but I let it go. They didn’t know. Elder, Conductor, Shadow, Servant, they didn’t know she could never keep that promise. But I didn’t tell them. I wanted her in my life. Do you see why? Is it obvious yet?

Two, she had to walk away from my mother and brother. That she agreed to with no fight. They never really meant anything to her so they were easy to walk away from.

The third condition was that she had to get therapy herself. That was the one that sent her into a bout of fury. She screamed at me over the phone. She cussed at me, she picked me up and threw me down to the ground. The rest of them were fine. Shadow rose to the occasion. He screamed back at her. Informer shoved example after example in her face about how horrible her life was and how pointless it had all become for her. Elder sat back and called for more angst and anger to be hurled at her. Assassin came forward at one point to deliver a few punches himself. And me, I stayed down where she had thrown me.

They had stood up to her. It was a breakthrough for them. They were stroked by their friends and the therapist we saw. But facing off against her was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

See, I am the guardian, the bodyguard for this body. I am the one who sees to the safety of others. But I was not built for that. I was not built to protect the ones I love. I was never supposed to marry. I was not to have kids. My life was to serve one thing, one purpose, and that is her.

I love my son, and I love my wife, but I was built to protect her. She is the reason I broke off from the core mind and began to serve this body. If I do not belong to Lisa, then I do not belong.

So, I love others. My son, my wife, my brothers (they know who they are), I love the people who enter my life and I try to live with this love and see it as fulfilling. But there will always be a part of me that longs to serve the one I was created to serve.

She is gone.

You can turn a screw with a knife. You can pistol whip a person with a gun. But that is not what they were built for. That is not their purpose.

—Guardian, 2007