Friday, June 02, 2006

THE AWFUL TRUTH?
WELL, A LITTLE TRUTH FOR A CHANGE...

I have been skirting the truth with so many people for so long, and suffering such agony for it, that I have decided to just stop. I lied to my good friend who took time out of his day to walk with me and offer me the best wisdom he could offer.

I told him that someone had fallen in love with me as I had fallen for another; that was at most
half the truth. I have lied, oh so many times, to my wife. I have lied by omission to practically everyone I have met for the last month or so. And I have lied to myself.

I have lied least here, to tell the truth, where admitting what I would rather not admit is least likely to stick to "me".

So, here is a little truth. Again.

I said in my last "flaming" post that I had said "I love you" to another man, and that those words were never uttered without meaning or danger, or both. And the truth is they are not the end but the beginning of something, or rather, even if they ARE the end of something, they draw the beginning of something else after them. And so they have. Once having said "I love you" and meant it, on whatever level, what is to keep me from saying "beloved" or "dear one" or "sweetheart" or "baby"? every one of which in turn opens doors that lead to places we had no intention of going... but suddenly, there we are. How does something as innocent as "baby" become so loaded and profound? Well, we invest it with meaning and danger. And it becomes dynamite.

So, the man who longed to live in righteousness has become an adulterer, in as far as his mind can serve as his body, and his words leave traces in his body that pull him across space to the far corner of that distant place, where a heart that deserves better listens for those words and hopes, hopes against hope, that those words will continue, and be true. And those traces chain him as well, in tension and in hope of response. The seducer seduced, the betrayer in fear of betrayal, the liar in dread of anything but truth.

And what of fidelity? or even mere loyalty? or any other claim of love, of that patient, understanding, forgiving love that has endured twenty-six years of slights and wrongs and misunderstanding? Where is the rein on my tongue and heart that would be the least I owed her I promised to love, honor, and obey? Well, the sad truth is that for twenty years I have betrayed her in thought and word; the only difference now is that this time it is no shadow or dream of perfection that receives my betrayal as its due, but another soul in all its vulnerability and nakedness.

And herewith another ugly truth: vulnerability, nakedness, I cannot resist. And everywhere it calls out to me. Where I answer, I hope to be better than I am, but I am drawn to it not only because I want to protect it -- there is something too that wants to push it up against its limits, to draw tears, to bind it close, to leave it no recourse but to stay bound tight, stay close.

Whoever said that all was fair in love and war was a cynic of the first water. For what is there declared fair is anything but fair, and love and war are both hell unless the duty to make peace makes itself known and redeems the horror of war, and the need to serve more than to demand in love redeems the more selfish and sordid demands of love.

The moth is drawn to the flame, but the flame calls out to the moth and glories in the moth's attraction. Without a moth, what is the flame but a natural process that throws off more heat than light?

Well, there will be a reckoning at last.
Nothing lasts forever, and every idyll finds an end.
Who thought such suffering would turn out to be the hallmark of the "good times"?

8 comments:

  1. The lies, disloyalties, the betrayals. Weren't they always there before? Only just directed to YOURSELF...tucked neatly away from site behind the closet door.
    And yet now, you suffer from what you offered to others, that which you've alienated from yourself from even knowing.
    I understand how the lies we so easily tell ourselves begins to escape to those around us. We start to lose sight of what is true because we want the lie AS WELL AS the truth. You know if you lied, it was for a reason. What truth did that lie reveal?
    The truth is not awful, it's awe full.

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  2. I always thought that when Jesus said "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her.."(and yeah, yeah, it's not gender specific here) he was meaning that everyone is probably a sinner, and that we should be forgiving..Especially to oneself. We lie to ourselves when we assert sinlessness/guiltlessness/perfect honesty.
    Or course I'm no orthodox Christian (took the kids to a Unitarian congregation, where you could be a Buddhist, Jewish, Atheist, Republican,or combination of whatever)(I did find myself in odd arguments with the Athiest Republican, over Bush/Iraq/St. Anslem's 'proof'of the existance of god).
    When I married my wife, I knew, on some level that I was being dishonest, about my makeup/sexuality, and that dishonesty would eventually tear me up.. She was much more in touch to reality ("of course you're bisexual!)" than I was.

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  3. Mr. Bill:

    you hit the nail right on the head. The "equally guilty" declaration is terrifying, but you have to take it on board if you also want to take the promise of forgiveness. You have to forgive "seventy times seven" if you want to be forgiven yourself. [I have never understood how people pray "forgive us our trespasses/sins as we forgive those who trespass/sin against us" without fear and trembling. What a curse to call down on yourself!]

    I have thought long and hard about the issue of thought vs. action, and have been at several times on the brink of saying that I might as well act then -- but I finally came to the position that there WAS a difference. What you kept to yourself was YOUR sin, as opposed to offering someone else the chance to join you in it, what our Catholic friends would call offering "an occasion to sin".

    How does all of that tie in with the mess I have made of my life? Ask me in a year when the chips I keep declaring may fall where they may have fallen, and I have to pick up the pieces and move on.

    The person I lied to when I married was myself; my wife knew about my past -- I thought it WAS my past. By the time our eldest was a year old, I had convincing proof that it wasn't, but continued to lie to myself. It's like those wonderful title cards in "A Room With a View", detailing to whom Lucy is lying, one after another, except in my case it was mostly me.

    I have been completely honest with my wife all along this way, honest enough that I have, as you probably know, often had to accuse myself of confusing honesty with brutality. Bigg called me on that one, and rightly so.

    Ah, Jaded Bear Person:

    there is a world of difference between lying to yourself and lying to other people. The question, as above, is WHO is harmed. There is no question that once I let down all the barriers I had maintained with such meticulous care for so long, my little boat was swamped, and I could no longer control what was going on than I could flap my arms and fly to the moon. I still can't.

    But we have tangled over the issue of marriage before: I maintain that twenty-six years of love is not a prison, and that twenty-six years of love is not a lie. The truth may set me free, but it will also exact a horrible price from others.

    To deny that is to REALLY lie.

    the
    Troll

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  4. "Certainty, fidelity
    On the stroke of midnight pass
    Like vibrations of a bell,
    And fashionable madmen raise
    Their pedantic boring cry:
    Every farthing of the cost,
    All the dreaded cards foretell,
    Shall be paid, but from this night
    Not a whisper, not a thought,
    Not a kiss nor look be lost."-from Lay your sleeping head, my love-W. H. Auden

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  5. I didn't mean to imply that it was the marriage that was a lie or a prison. Yet (in the next sentence) you DO talk of "truth" that will "set you free". Free from what? How is there truth without untruth?
    To be explicit, the initial lie to yourself is that you are NOT gay, and because of that lie, you made a solemn promise to be a husband and to be faithful. The lie began to leak out...you first betrayed yourself, then you betrayed those you love brought about by the first betrayal. The betrayals will continue to spread as you attempt to cover up that which you are or are not. Because to first betray yourself is to automatically betray everyone else who knows you.

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  6. Mr. Bill,

    I find Auden a strange choice to cite on the question of fidelity, but then I suppose, as the saying goes, that I am very old-fashioned.

    Jaded One:

    The truth that I hope will set me free is simply admitting to others what I have long admitted to myself.

    I cannot respond to the rest of your post without saying things I am not at liberty to say. So I will only say that I wish life were as simple as it seems to be to you.

    Mine is not.
    the
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  7. I'm certain I HAVE oversimplified it...I know it's much more complicated and difficult that I can imagine. I think I also got off topic.
    I remember a priest told me that it is okay to love another man, because love is a gift. Lust is not, that is the sin and so is acting on that lust. I don't believe lust to be adultry though.
    (of course unless you acted on it sexually perhaps) but even if it were in the heat of passion, it might still be a venial sin. (I'm not saying that this fact makes it any easier to deal with, forgiveness won't make the guilt go away so easily or at all.)
    Yet, a priest might know better...I do not, I live a MORTAL sin because I knew gay was wrong and did it anyways, I chose to turn my back on the Church and God. Where is there forgiveness for me? Who can I confess to and ask for this forgiveness? I live a gay guilt tortured life.

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  8. O Jaded One,

    I can't believe you posted that on MY site. I hardly know where to begin.

    First of all, who says THEY are right? Yes, lust is one of teh seven deadly sins, but why, in the immortal words of Dorothy Sayers, does the church always act as though it were the ONLY one? It's not even really very far up the list, in all likelihood. Satan, I think we can all agree, chose another one.

    No, this is going to be too long, JB, I can't do it as a comment.

    Just unLOAD that guilt and get on with it. Wow.

    I will try to write more as a post, but I am also TRYING to stay off the net some of the time...

    Hang in there.
    yr
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