Truth is...

April 4, 2012

          Rollo May maintains that “It is easier in our society to be naked physically than to be naked psychologically or spiritually.”  All of those things take courage, but most importantly, they take facing and living in truth. 

          Last week, two true artists passed away, leaving the world a little dimmer.  I first met Adrienne Rich, through her writing, during a Women’s Lit class for my MFA in creative non-fiction where I discovered feminism for the first time in my early thirties.  She taught me to “re-vision” and “understand the assumptions in which we are drenched” and to “know” myself.  Her ideas, her words sprouted like seeds tossed into fertile ground, and two years later, we met again during my final semester at Murray State University.  That January residency, we read and discussed her essay, “Women and Honor:  Some Notes on Lying,” and her words bloomed into a tree of knowledge as I realized my life was a lie.  

January 2009:  On a blustery, lonely evening in Murray, Kentucky, we gather in a room at the Holiday Inn to read Adrienne Rich, revise our work and, more importantly, converse.  

          “I don’t like it,” C says as she lies on the bed, the book on her stomach, eyes closed.  “It’s too abstract.”

          “I loved it.  The ideas in it have been swirling in my mind for two days now.”  In an easy chair, I pore over the words on my laptop.

          C tosses the book on the bed, “I don’t know what to write about.”

          “Me either.  I can’t see any images.  I’ve written a bunch of disjointed thoughts—like these in the book—the white space—philosophical.”

          C swings her legs over the side of the bed and turns to me, “It’s about lying.”

          I nod, wondering where she’s going with it.

          She grabs the book and reads “Liars use silence” before tossing it aside.  “That’s not the passage K assigned, though.”

          “I don’t think she’ll care; if something else comes to you, then write it.”

          C crosses to her computer, sits and stares at the screen.  “I’ve got nothing.”

          “I keep thinking about that void.  What is it really?  Here’s what I have so far:

The liar fears the void; truth is we’re all liars.  Someone asks, “How are you?” and you answer, “Fine” while your mind screams.  What my husband told me today is unbearable.  You can never tell anyone about that pain, so you bury the shame and try never to look at it again. 

“I tell it like it is, tell people what I think of them,” my birth dad once told me.  “If I don’t, I drink, and I’ll die.”  The void, that dark nothing suffocates.  James Joyce wrote about people trapped in horrible lives unable to escape because their denials and illusions hold no room for “the polished mirror.”  Ensnared in a body I despise ….”   

I wince at my writing.

C paces the room, turns off the football game.  “Remember at dinner what Caitlin said?  The void is what we avoid.”

“Yeah, the void, the unnamed within.  The void, the emptiness.  What we avoid and attempt to escape is part of the void.  Still crap.  Last night, K talked about how we use things—food, liquor, busyness, TV, jobs, sex—to avoid the void.  But we’re still just lying to ourselves.”

C returns to the bed.  “I can’t think of any details.  I can’t see anything.  It’s pissing me off.”

“Me, too.  I want to not lie anymore.”

“That’s it.”

I look at her, waiting.

“That’s what I have to write about.  I’ve hated living in Nashville and lied about it to the people there.  You just slapped me in the face with that thought.”

“Happy to help.”  Our laughter echoes in the room as I type.  “Listen to this:

I want to say I will never lie again, not to others and definitely not to myself.  But that would be a lie.  I could say that my intention is to never lie again, but that, too, would be a lie.

Still, I am a seeker of truth, a pilgrim searching for the light of understanding.

Now I sound like a preacher.”

C scoots back on the bed, reclines against the pillow.  My mind continues to churn.  I see words like truth and lie and void.  Something hovers below the surface.  Unsettled, I fidget.  My mind rests on something C said to me earlier.  I look at her and say, “C, you just slapped me back.” 

Back in my plain, depressing, white dorm, I write this conversation.  Only later can I write what I don’t want to touch. “Your family wants you to lie,” C had said.

My family wants me to lie.  At ten, I was badgered until I admitted to stealing, hiding, the phone.  I didn’t take the damn phone, but I did take the punishment.  I just wanted to be left alone. 

My family wants me to lie.  For sixteen years, my parents kept silent.  At sixteen, they finally told me the truth.  I grew up not knowing that the man I called dad wasn’t my biological father.  My childhood equals void.  Too much I cannot see. 

My family wants me to lie.  Now in my thirties, my marriage is falling apart.  My mom tells me to submit to this man who will, in her religion, be my husband in God’s eyes for the rest of my life.  Another family member tells me to respect my husband who will then, miraculously after seventeen years of marriage, respect me.  My husband tells me we’re divorced in his mind but he’s not leaving, so we live as a married couple, miserable and fighting.

My family wants me to lie.  Patterns of lies weave into a web of self-deceit.  I lie to myself.  I deserve this.  It’s all my fault.  If only I tried harder. 

Wrapped in layers of lies, I couldn’t see reality.  Truth is…my life is a lie.

Once I wrote those words in 2009, I knew change was necessary.  “The unconscious wants truth,” Rich shared, and more than anything, I discovered a love for truth.  Sometimes it is difficult to see, and other times, I don’t want to face it.  But always, for me, speaking truth keeps me (somewhat) sane and alive…breathing.

Now I type this in my condo in Florida, the first place I have ever paid for on my own.  The first time I have ever had a room of my own.  I am a divorced woman, starting over in a new place, raising two teenage daughters alone.  I work hard teaching and tutoring, and I have met some amazing people.  I live ten minutes from the Atlantic Ocean and love seeing the sun shine most days.  These small details are part of my current truth as I piece together a new path. 

          Thank you, Adrienne Rich, for helping me to recognize the lie my life had become.  I am still cleaning up the messes from living those lies, but I am doing it.  And part of that process is getting to know me.

I didn’t know Harry Crews as well as Rich…I only met him in his documentary, The Rough South of Harry Crews, during my last residency.  Immediately, he stood out as someone who spoke only truth.  No matter what.  "If you're gonna write, for God in heaven's sake, try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you've been told," he said.  And, "A writer's job is to get naked, to hide nothing, to look away from nothing, to look at it. To not blink, to not be embarrassed by it or ashamed of it. Strip it down and let's get to where the blood is, where the bone is."  Where is the blood?  Where is the bone?  Where are the dark places that I don’t want to see?  For now, I am open. 

Thank you, Harry Crews for your willingness to dive into the dark heart and share what you saw.  As I clear up the lies and burn away what is false, I begin to see and speak truth.  I begin to know who I am.

Although all of this is scary, it is also freeing, which is what keeps me delving back into places I don’t want to go.  It is what keeps me asking, “What do I not want to see today?”

Are you able to see and speak truth?  How are you living your truth today?