Exposed

I just got back from lunch with my theology professor, who is an awesome, chill person as well as a wonderful intellectual, and he was curious about my year away from Wheaton and asked some direct questions, and I am always honest to those, and we ended up talking about depression and therapy and antidepressants from our own experiences. He said, You should be proud of yourself. Or, I'm really proud of you? Which was so kind.

And this reminded me how exhausting it is to tell the truth, not that I lie the rest of the time, but things true enough that you aren't supposed to say them too often or too openly. It's the model of magic like in Tamora Pierce's books, where you use some and that uses up part of you and you don't get that energy back for a little while. And telling the truth is kind of a working of magic, isn't it. Spells to shed light in the heart and tie people together.

But it hurts and is hard, and I would like to say it again: having told the truth, now I feel the pavement pulling me to sit and cover my face, so exhausted and not wanting to be seen but accepting visibility as the prerequisite for all loves, but most of all wanting to be seen not in part or carelessly but all of me and with charity. Read with charity. All truths are partial if you tell them to people who will not try to see too, else you would have to take hours or days to tell it. All of it.

Hard truth used to make me shiver and my teeth chatter. Also, twice, or maybe three times, I have told substantial truths and not told them carefully enough, and I was subsequently judged and left alone by the people I told, respectively, and that hurt more than anything else in my life so far has. So it's still frightening; so I believe you need to be very careful.

That is one thing about blogging, isn't it? I can tell to the best of my ability, and I can tell as much of it as I think needs to be told for it to be understood, and keep telling it as long as I want. Almost as if I were retelling it to myself. I suppose that is why blogging does not make me feel that exposed-rabbit tired-magic way.

Now I am going to pull a blanket over my head and read some more about Antarctica.

Peace.