I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying: Essays

Because I know how that dog-eared page persists and insists you return to it. I know how the brain and the heart and the spirit fight daily to stay in the book and not write themselves out of the story. I know. I know. I know.

I thought about the way my mind wanders, how I drift through days losing hours, forgetting to remain in my body. How they call me absentminded, forgetful. The way I am mercury spilling over surfaces—solid and liquid, here and not.

ANXIETY IS ITS OWN creature. Anxiety asks me to focus on the terrible things I’ve done. The people I’ve hurt. The promises I’ve broken. Anxiety tells me to make a list. Mistakes. Regrets. Lies. A litany of shortcomings, a coil tightened, ready to spring.

I give them the suggestion Allow yourself morning. I tell them it means that today may have been a rolling ball of anxiety and trembling, a face wet and slick with tears, but if you can get to morning, if you can allow yourself a new day to encourage a change, then you can get through it. Allow yourself morning.

I forgive her always because how can you not forgive someone whose whole life was a sprint towards survival?

Imagine you didn't fit in anywhere, not even in your own head.

My older cousins told me that white people used to be brown, like us, until they did something to anger God. He turned them into fleshless, pale shells as punishment. “Look at how their skin reddens in the sun. Look at how it burns. Look at how the sweat pours down their faces and flattens their hair.” They used my fear to convince me to steal coconut sweets and biscuits from the market—threatening me with “God said to listen, or do you want to become one of the white people?

This job that I'm so lucky to have, this job that I am constantly reminded not to take for granted, this job that people would die for. I'm waiting for it to kill me.

She weaponizes her silences.

This thing ain’t easy. And I don’t mean to complain because this life is beautiful and it’s magic. And I am blessed and grateful. But this brain feels broken sometimes. This brain does this thing that takes little soap bubbles of “everyone feels this sometimes” and morphs them into latex balloons of “you’re the only one in this world who can’t seem to lift herself out of bed in the morning” and then the balloon becomes brick and the brick becomes wall and the wall is a mountain and then you’re stuck. So I’m grateful to only be latex balloon right now.

Anxiety asks me to focus on the terrible things I’ve done. The people I’ve hurt. The promises I’ve broken. Anxiety tells me to make a list. Mistakes. Regrets. Lies. A litany of shortcomings, a coil tightened, ready to spring.

My mother mistakes questions for attacks and accusations. She weaponizes her silences.

how can you not forgive someone whose whole life was a sprint towards survival?

Even when the best things occur, when the sun is angled just enough to offer light or there is beauty somewhere shining in the distance, the voice says‚ This will not last. You do not deserve this peace. Remember that time . . . remember how he cried . . . remember how she shook with disappointment. Remember how you break everything you touch

The restlessness has begun, like a low hum in my belly. It follows me through my days. I am sleepless nights. The comfort found only in quiet.

Yoga was still terrible, like a game of Simon Says with no winner.

It's difficult to distinguish which lies are mine and which belong to others. Which I told to close the gaps in my brain and which were told to me to silence my questions.

It makes you feel unfinished, like in your family's eyes you will never be completely whole. And in your eyes, you have never been completely whole.

You are proud of the way the night loved you so much it offered you stars for your face.

He is the only one I regret being too broken for. If I could have allowed myself to love him, maybe this life would have shaped itself differently. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to wait to break. Maybe I wouldn’t have broken at all. Or fallen. Or maybe he would have caught me. Or maybe I would have destroyed him. I think I would have destroyed him.

People—usually men—tell me that I only remember what I want to, that my memory is selective. They’re right. I choose to only look back on the things I can see and still remain whole and upright.

Anxiety is its own creature. It asks me to focus on the terrible things I’ve done, the people I’ve hurt, the promises I’ve broken. Anxiety tells me to make a list - mistakes, regrets, lies - a coil ready to spring.

Lies are how I keep breathing. When anxiety over something I know I can't change presents itself, I lie in bed and reimagine it. I turn the purple bruises of memory into lipstick-stained kisses, the crushing weight of life into neck-nuzzling embraces.

Together we prevented the melting. The boiling over. We agreed to take on the labor of helping each other heal. It was business. There may have been a contract. There was no contract, just trust built early and adhered to like ritual.

I followed the rules but now I wanted to feel something different‚ to feel better, to feel unbroken‚ more than I wanted anything else. I wanted something other than this Novocain and numbness. Its very name revealed its power: I wanted ecstasy.

They looked up at me like eyes of judgment. But there was nothing those eyes could say to me that mine hadn't already held.

I made new rules. Told myself they would keep me safe: I would isolate the experience, keep it away from my waking life

The crash continued until all I could feel was shame and dirt, no more gold and glitter.

I could just go, the thought crossed my mind again and again, until suddenly I was a little less high and I turned away from the street, terrified of what it meant. I could finally sense that I wasn't okay