They’d hid the truth the way you hide things from a child, spelling out the bad words.
You can’t love someone and hold yourself apart from them like that. If love means anything it’s wanting to share a point of view.
For all our problems, I believed we were true companions. Like people watching a play together in a theatre, committed to an act of shared witnessing. If we disagreed later about what was good or bad or even about the central facts of what we saw, we knew at least we saw it together from a common corner of the room. Our arms close enough to touch. But lying, the serious kind, casts people in different relation. You’re not seated together anymore. The lied to person becomes the play. Tossed up onto the set, as an unconsenting actor. Because what can you be with the truth hidden away except a character trapped in a premise, living a make believe life? You go cluelessly about your days. Unaware you’re on a stage. While the liar watches from the shadows. Seeing everything you don’t. They can get up and leave the theatre. But you can only stay there in the dark, wondering why they seem so far away- Squinting up now and then at the klieg lights you’ve mistaken for the sun.
-The Sky Was Ours, Joe Fassler

#whatislove #whatisalie #theatre #whatisbeautiful #whatisugly #heavyfoot