Telling The Truth Is Dangerous

But it’s worth telling. And what makes it worth it, sometimes, is when someone else contacts you out of the blue–about something you’d kind of forgotten you’d written–and tells you that they had the same experience and they understand, and that your words have helped them in some way.

This is why it’s so important not to bullshit on the page. You never know where your words are going to land.

It took a long time before I was willing to simply state things I’d kept secret for years. When one grows up in a severely dysfunctional household, silence is enforced so the dysfunction can reign. Even when you become an adult and are ostensibly “free”, the silence is enforced. You’re not allowed to speak clearly because the world will end. Nobody will love you, the world will end, disaster will ensue and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT.

Or so you’re told.

To speak clearly and simply, to refuse to obfuscate, to stand your ground and refuse to carry the secrets for the people who should have loved and protected you and didn’t…that requires courage, or stubbornness, or whatever damn thing you want to call it. It becomes so much exponentially easier when someone else speaks the same kind of truth and you realize you are not a horrible freak and a mistake, you’re not the only person in the world who went through this, that you’re not somehow lacking. It strikes right at the heart of the myth that is forced on children in that kind of situation–the myth that they somehow deserved to be treated that way.

It is a myth. It is untrue. No child deserves that.

But children grow up and we are faced with a choice. Telling the truth also requires that you don’t treat the people you love like trash, using that childhood trauma as the excuse. Sinking into a sea of victimhood is another lie, and an insidious one at that. This is our choice: to face it somehow, or to sink. Some of us sink, and I understand why. The weight gets to be too much when you’re struggling for a shore that always recedes like a gambler’s dream. It’s hard to tell the truth when your entire life conspires to keep you complicit in a lie. I am not angered by this. Understanding breeds compassion, and I understand. Christ, do I ever understand.

I am one of the lucky. And maybe I can throw a line, and there’s a chance someone can catch it. That chance is worth taking, to me. I am lucky that I have the energy to throw the line–and I am endlessly lucky to have a line to throw. The language is a line. It was my salvation.

I will not let go of my end. I promise to hold on as long as I can, as hard as I can, and to pull with everything in me.

So to you–you know who you are–thank you for telling me that my words mattered to you. We do not have to feel alone.

Thank you for having the courage to speak.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. Please comment there.