Truths, Half-truths and Lies

Truths, half-truths and lies
flow from every aspect of a memoir writer’s life

An old drunk writing his memoir and riddled with cancer and so much emotional pain he couldn’t start would call me sporadically from the East Coast for plot support. He was famous for writing for all sorts of prestigisous world events magazines from all over the world. His story’s crisis (and seemingly, his life, too) centered on deception of some sort by his mother… and his father. I only remember that the story revolved around truth, half-truths and lies, like his writing life.

His life force had dripped away from the knife that was buried in his heart the day he learned of the deception. When he moved from reciting the events of his life during our calls to feeling them, what had been a steady decline in both his health and his drinking speeded up.

I remember him yelling at me that he wasn’t paying me to do therapy on him as he whispered all sorts of horrors both real and imagined that controlled his life or at least his writing. He just couldn’t get the words on the page and commit to moving forward.

We talked for months. I fell in love with him, with his flaws, his obsessions, his stubborn will to punish himself for stories he told about himself. He’s dead now. I still marvel at the power stories have over us that we tell ourselves and believe as real. I mourn over all the truths, half-truths and lies that gush from our backstory wounds and their affect on our inner voice, our decisions, often our every move…