Agony of Telling

Here is a little something I wrote in response to a prompt in Natalie Goldberg’s Room to Write, (one of my favorite books of writing exercises, btw). I was attempting to evoke the terror and disorientation I felt the morning after my stepfather had climbed on my little girl bed, jammed his hands where they shouldn’t be, and admonished me not to tell anyone – the terror I felt on my way to tell, unsure if I would be heard or what would happen next.

That fear I had about telling my mother what her husband had done to me, while she was away, while their son slept in the room across the stairway landing from me…it was wrapped up in shame, words that would turn my stomach to speak, fear that I was partly to blame because I hadn’t worn panties to bed, guilt that telling her would surely destroy her marriage…and what would happen once my little brother found out?

I’m not sure that last fear was ever realized, not sure he ever heard about it. If he did, he may have heard it was a lie. To him at the time, I was there one day when he went to bed, and I was gone before he got home from preschool the next day. My mother had dropped me on my father’s doorstep after screaming at her husband over the phone. I felt so supported for that moment – when she was screaming.

For that moment.

Telling my truth(s) has been at least as agonizing since then – with as little or equally fleeting support. I know I’m not alone in that.

We begin with our truths

A small chalkboard hangs on the pale blue wall to the left of where I sit in front of my computer to work every day. I selected the paint and rolled it on that wall myself – blues are supposed to be soothing, calming. The white, chalky words written on the small black rectangle are not. They are a reminder to keep me honest, like when I asked my partner to come with me to the doctor appointment when I would confess my alcoholism and ask for help.

The chalkboard reads, “We begin with our truths. – M&N” (M=Meagan, N=Noblelee)

This reminder grips my metaphorical heart and twists. The agony of telling my truths these days is different than when I was little. It is wound and bound with so many sinewy threads spun over time:

Thread 1: Even now that eight years have gone by since I last saw or spoke to the woman that gave birth to me, since I pushed her out of my life because I could no longer look in her eyes knowing that she would always choose her husband over me, I wrestle with the guilt of telling the truths of my childhood, exposing that it was her husband that hurt me and that she chose to stay with him. It is an important part of my story, but: Will it get back to her? Will others on her side of the family find out? Will she cry that deep, welling sob that can only be expressed inside, in lurching, churning guts? I don’t want to hurt her. I love her and understand her; she is doing the best she can with her own life, her own pain and trauma.

Thread 2: Fear of dismissal or rejection, as if I had done something wrong but couldn’t quite name that thing, like I felt when I realized my mother wasn’t coming back after dropping me on my father’s doorstep, except for visits in restaurants, too few and far between. This fear seems woven into my DNA, reshaping it. It may, if fact, be.

Thread 3: Shame over my struggles with PTSD, anxiety, depression – raised in a culture that treated such conditions as something wrong with people like me, rather than the people and culture that created those conditions in me from the injuries they inflicted on me in the first place; raised in a culture that told me to hide my pain if I wanted to succeed but gave me no resources to help me live with that pain.

Thread 4: Worry that my dad and stepmom and everyone around them would be horrified that I would talk about such unseemly things, that I would bring shame on them from talking about my 19-year-old suicide attempt borne of trying, on my own, to deal with the cascade of sexual assaults that followed that early abuse. They may take it personally, though my truths are not about them.

Thread 5: Understanding that exposure of my alcoholism and struggles with severe depression and anxiety would bring judgment by colleagues, employers, clients, acquaintances. Even with my big brains and hard work, opportunity to do the work I value, that I am gifted to do, could liquify and evaporate.

And thread 6: Fear that the exposure of so many choices along the way – from drug use to my sexuality – would bring even harsher judgment, greater exile. I am not ready to tell all these things yet, but they will come eventually, ready or not…because it’s all part of my story of my own incredible feat of surviving.

Even with all those threads winding through my insides as I gather the courage I need to eke out each truth, I am compelled to tell these stories. It is impossible to understand me without understanding these parts of my story, and I hope others will feel less alone when they read them.

Also, somehow, I sense that there is a better way forward on the other side, that by facing each of our truths as clearly and thoroughly as possible, we might discover that better way. Noblelee and I start with ours and hope others will chime in with their own as we wrestle with old and new ideas that may yet help us to find that better way.

And…

I don’t want to hide anymore.

*exhale*