Truth and Reconciliation, Part I

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1896 - 1940)

Fitzgerald knew a little something about pain. And he knew a little something about succinctness too - Gatsby was less than 200 pages if I recall. The last 5 years of my life took, well...5 years for me to live through. Francis Scott summed up those 5 years in 14 words. Pain and shame have been the name of my game. And I have come to be so familiar with them, that opportunities arose for me to let go of them and I didn't want to. I knew them inside out, pain and shame, they had become friends to me. They filled me with a familiar warmth when someone asked me where I was and I couldn't find the courage to tell them that I didn't know. People would ask me where I was, and my first instinct was to tell them the truth - that I honestly didn't know, that I'd gotten lost and needed help - but there was the pain and the shame tugging at my sleeve. I'd look down at them and they'd whisper 'Just tell a fib. It doesn't matter' and it seemed to make so much sense. And so I'd lie, just a little one, here and there, and for a while afterwards things would be better. I wouldn't have to think about being lost, or people wondering after me. But the plan had a flaw. Little things never stay little for long. They grow, everything struggles to grow, to be more than what it is. Bacteria, children, lies. Small things grow, that's just nature...tbc...