On truths

“you’ve spent a lifetime in silence, scared that you’ll say something wrong”

– Emeli Sande

“These kids want something new I swear it, something they wanna say but couldn’t coz they’re embarrassed”

– Childish Gambino

The idea of speaking one’s truth is always one I’ve been wary of. In fact, I’d probably argue that I’ll always be wary of it. Truths collide. And truths, being so closely tied to the self are more often than not imagined as communicable. We protect our truths because we don’t imagine that they are sufficient. We protect our truths because we don’t imagine anyone will accept them.

In effect, this means that speaking one’s truth becomes an action of laying one bare. An action of putting the self on the line. Putting the self in the line of possible violence.

That’s scary.

That’s very scary.

So we keep people around us who, we believe, are speaking truths. We wait for them to give us permission to speak our truths. We pick our cues off them. Is a certain way of being allowed? Is a certain way of being accepted? In our minds we don’t understand it. But we don’t care. We’d rather not try to figure it out. Instead we look for reasons to invalidate uncomfortable truths. We see the big buildings, but we don’t see the deaths. We see the industry but not the industrious.

The problem is that a truth, once seen, cannot be unseen.

Any further ignoring of this truth is willful.

(but this is neither about the will nor unseeing)

Inside a dark room a candle flickered. Somehow it was not that there was an idea but that the idea had taken over the space. As if somehow a presence – except not.

Not yet.

 

But truth,

at the end

of the day,

is just a

five letter word.

 

So we hide it. We put the truth behind complicated multisyllabic dated artforms that were invented to represent emotions. We make it so difficult to imagine within the frames of stark because we are afraid. We are afraid that the world is out to get us. Afraid that we know too much. Afraid that we know too little. Afraid that we are inadequate.

 “Still,

somehow,

she heard

me wrong.”

 – Dude

I’ve never understood how people communicate. Half the time I walk around asking myself “what do they even mean by that?” I spend large chunks of time in my head trying to figure out what people are talking about. Because many times conversations are metaphors. Because many times we’re saying a lot more.

 (Most other people seem to have this down somehow. I’m not sure how, I’m quite jealous.)

Her hand, steady at first, was now shaking. She lifted the paper off her desk. Holding it up to the flame. She began to read.

 Still we don’t know what we mean when we say these things. Instead we agree that certain combinations of words and letters mean something. But we agree in different ways. Our groups, our circles all settle on different meanings, different contexts (what’s life without a little fun?)

 …happily ever after.” She finished, slowly crumpling the paper.

But at the end of the day we have to survive. We have to live somehow. So every day we wake up, hoping it will be different. Hoping that somehow, we’ll get it.

(a shoe falls from the rack

he is unbothered

it’s not

making

more

sense)

 

Instead it gets more confusing.

 

Darkness. A thought wanders “now that I’ve burned the last page of my manuscript, how will I see my future?”