I was listening to a fictional book, "All Fall Down" by Jennifer Weiner and she was writing about a woman who discovered her mother had been an alcoholic for the first time when she was in rehab.
She had a wonderful way of writing about the fact that we are living very close to piercing the curtain of denial. That just one slip and the veil is broken and we are tossed into a completely different world. The life and childhood and even the relationship between her parents completely changed, once she knew that her mother was not who she thought she was.
She described it as two worlds living by each other and in heartbeat, you can be tossed into the other world...and the old one is now closed to you.
I am uncertain if I can correctly articulate the how close this other world is; while you are an unbeliever that it exists.
How cleverly it is disguised by your unknowing.
It is right there.
But your faith in the other world is so complete...you don't ever even comtemplate a different view of your parents...say. You just continue to believe your childhood version. Until.
Until something pierces the veil of unknowing.
This cover that was placed there when you were too young to know. To incapable in undestanding the nuances of adult behaving badly.
And yet. Once she knew, she understood her self better and her parents became strangers to her.
I understand this.
If you can visualize how awkward it is to be living a life not knowing the truth and not being able to fit in and feel comfortable. Something is "OFF" and you believe it is you.
I guess I hadn't seen it as two complete worlds running side by each....and me living in one (the false one) and my parents living in the real world, keep it from me.
Keeping it from me by not letting me live there.
Not allowing their truth to live with me.
Again, not sure if it makes sense to you all, but it certainly does to me.
The spin they place on reality when we are children and believable...is what helps creates this alternate world. And, our need and survival upon them. We need to believe in a world that isn't cruel.
I guess I had taken complete ownership of my denial, that it was my fake world...and didn't consider their hand in helping me stay there.
The multitude of ways of covering it up...and the stresses of not letting the two worlds meet.
How we see what we believe and not see what is.
These two worlds exist side by each....always.
Which world you live in depends upon many things.
It wasn't until she see herself as her mother...and she was having a hard time pretending this "other world" was her life. When the truth was too hard to cover up or she was tired of trying...or her husband was tired of the lies he kept stumbling up...that she gave up pretending. And, it all fell down.
What falls apart, when our lives fall apart, is often the fake world. The one we pretend is us. The one we share with others, but isn't our truth. When my world crashed, it was on the pretend one.
Each time we lie or deceive, we are creating another world.
And, I wonder how many folks die living in a fake world.
How many live in just one world. One where truth is told, no matter what. Whose life has only one side...reality.
Interesting to know, if you are not being wholly authentic, there is another world running at your side. The two lives of you.
