Sometimes “oh” is all I can say when I hear something I don’t like. I had an oh-moment on Tuesday night when my husband, G, drunkenly shared a little secret: the Truth about an event that happened ten years ago.
Lies are familiar. I lie to myself all the time--we all do. It’s how we ward off the spirits of things we cannot change. But when someone we love tells us a lie, that’s different. It can feel like the end. It calls into question everything that came before, and that comes next, evidence otherwise be damned.
G lied because he knew I’d be hurt. He lied because it wouldn’t happen again. He lied because we were fragile. Given what I’m feeling right now, I can’t blame him. And given what was happening in our marriage then, I don’t blame him. That time was one of big Mistakes--with a capital M--mine included. A time I thought I’d processed and packed away.
Memories are tricky, though. They don’t get sorted into neat packing cubes and locked forever-away inside a Samsonite.
Instead, memories mix and mingle. They promiscuously latch onto others and form a memory chain. So once you tug on any itty-bitty string--a thought, an idea, an image--the strand gets longer like pulling a loose little string on your favorite cardigan. Yank too hard, and there’s a gaping hole.
That’s what happened. Truth wrenched a “packed away” strand, which gripped another, and another. And now there’s a tug of war going on inside. Because I don’t want more memories tumbling out.
My grown-up voice says deal with it. I’m “evolved” after all. And I have options to respond to this situation, ones that don’t involve a simple “fuck you, I’m out.”
Yet choosing a healthy, relationsip-positive option is wholly unnatural, especially during emotionally charged moments. Moments when I'm at my weakest. But these are the moments that matter most--when ugly words can tumble out and fabricate a new relationship Truth. And those kinds of Truths hurt more than a lie ever could.