2023 Nonfiction Runner-Up: "Confidentiality Agreement between H. Company and the Recipient" by Dawn

Photo Credit: Viktor Talashuk, obtained and licensed through Unsplash.

Confidentiality Agreement between H. Company and the Recipient

This agreement was made on 31/10/1995 between the disclosing party (H. Company, LLC.) and the receiving party (“Recipient”).

To ensure a consistent and healthy working relationship between the recipient and H. Company, this NDA has been drafted to prevent the unsavory information, false or otherwise, from leaking to the public. Anticipate that H. Company will never, under any circumstances, reveal documents of any incriminating nature to parties outside of the Recipient. Know that H. Company thrives on the Recipient’s inability to open up to others to create premium working conditions. Anticipate that, through stress and self-loathing when reviewing past documentation, the Recipient should feel increased anxiety and self-loathing as per the “Pressure Creates Diamonds” clause in attached document.

Due to above mentioned information, H. Company desires to ensure complete confidentiality in all matters concerning its operations and the Recipient’s part in them.

Therefore, these provisions shall be put in place to ensure continued cooperation between Recipient and H. Company.

1. Recipient shall (from the day of their birth to the presently unidentified date of their passing) hold in confidence their inferiority complex. Recipient shall not disclose documentation revealing how much they despise being compared to their sister. As per the contract, as written family drama may be dealt with by withdrawing entirely.

2. The Recipient may not, under any circumstances, cry. This action may inadvertently reveal H. Company and Recipient’s internal work structure. To avoid scrutiny over H. Company’s practices due to their highly valued efficiency, the Recipient must relinquish tear duct access to H. Company. This, too, is forbidden to be discussed save between H. Company and the Recipient.

3. Under the obligations of the agreement, the Recipient may not participate in discussions involving their well-being, up to and including (a) If the Recipient has been sleeping well, (b) Why the Recipient prefers being alone as opposed to being surrounded by friends or family, (c) The trauma the Recipient has endured as documented in the Cannon files (collectively, “Military Service”), (d) How much it hurts and how it will never stop hurting.

4. The Recipient’s words, at all times, belong to H. Company. Canned responses to any aforementioned questioning may be relegated to “I’m fine”, “Leave me alone”, “Whatever”, and “I don’t really care.”

5. The Recipient agrees to all clauses outlined above as well as the following terms and conditions:

• Should the Recipient reveal the amount of self-loathing they currently own, their hatred of their own weaknesses, or their spite of those around them, they subject themselves to instances of self-harm, crippling apathy, depressive episodes, the disconnection of bonds both familial and friendly, and erasure of the self.

• The Recipient agrees that they will question themselves endlessly, as inward questioning prevents outward reactivity in line with the clauses stated in the contract. H. Company looks forward to a continued and healthy relationship with the Recipient.

Documents Enclosed Fall

Under

Clauses in Attached NDA

Pressure Creates Diamonds

For Official Use Only

This document, like every other piece of paper here, is worthless as anything other than a joke. It’s all a joke to someone, but maybe not to the Recipient. Somebody can get a laugh from it, somebody can smile, but the Recipient isn’t allowed those privileges. From the moment the Recipient said to their father, “I just want to be normal,” in an attempt to escape their sister’s widely cast shadow, they forfeited the right.

Henceforth, the Recipient is expected to shut their mouth, keep their head down, and “be a man.” This imposition will not benefit them in any way. This imposition will not help them grow into a better person. This imposition is self-destructive, like stone that may have found a use being pulverized and pressurized until it becomes something pretty, something hardy, something see-through.

The Recipient may have wanted to be “normal,” but that desire doesn’t align with what they actually wanted. The Recipient may have wanted to be praised and loved too, but fragility does not allow for this. Fragility makes for a lesser product.

Granite? Hardy, but unimpressive. Marble? Beautiful, bold, but fragile. The Recipient will be told all throughout their life, never by their family but by themselves and their peers, that they must become a diamond. 

Stress is a normal part of pressure, and so is anxiety.

Pressure creates diamonds.

But the Recipient isn’t a stone, and pressure can only serve to break them.

For Official Use Only

Cannon Files

When I think back on my time in Cannon, I ask myself “was it worth it?” I adhered to the clause. I kept everything inside. I let the pressure build until it was ready to break and burst through my bones. I was told I would be rebuilt stronger and better, and that the military had become my new family.

I never felt weaker. I never felt more alone.

Pressure never created diamonds. Pressure forced dark red to spill down from my arms and onto the cold, metal floor. Pressure kept my head down, staring at the floor looking for missing pieces of machinery on the surface when, in reality, the weight of the inadequacy I was accused of pressed down my shoulders and neck.

A single error is a hundred lives and a hundred million dollars gone.

I had to suck it up. Be a man. Sit quietly and know how many lives were in my hands when the smallest mistake could send them tumbling from the sky.

Suck it up. Be a man. Suffer in silence while sickness claimed my bones. Drag my body out of the building, laughed at, humiliated, alone for hours down only to discover a severe strain of flu put more strain on my ever-weakening heart.

Suck it up. Be a man. See what death awaited me if a single spark of electricity passed through a bundle of wire, red as blood, crushing people within the wing flaps of the behemoth planes.

Suck it up. Be a man. Crawl across the ice on the top of the steel behemoth. Hold the scream ready to escape as I fall from the wings, only to be grasped by my belt. Saved. Alive. But the job isn’t done.

For Official Use Only

I sucked it up. I was a man. I kept my head down and I pushed, and struggled, and fought back the trauma, the tears, the fears, and it was never enough.

I say, “It had to have had a purpose. There had to have been worth in it. A diamond in all the muck.”

 I can’t know.

I can only file this experience away like I’ve done everything else in my life. Hold it inside until it disappears. Out of sight, back of mind.

Suck it up. Be a man. Whatever. I don’t really care.

I’m fine.

What Was The Use?

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Dawn is a former Air Force enlistee, separated from the military after the end of a four-year contract during which he served at Cannon AFB in New Mexico.