What would happen if...

The other day while working on one of my daily collages, I came across a quote I’d heard and read many times before, but for some reason this time I stopped and considered it as I never had before. This is Muriel Rukeyser’s quote: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” Perhaps her answer is a bit overblown, but her question is radical.

What if I told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in all situations? While I don’t mean to imply that I am a bold-faced liar, I must admit that most of my interactions with other people involve some form of shading the truth. “Don’t you just love this roast beef?” “Well, not really. I find most beef dishes to be dry and tough,” is what I’m thinking, but what I say is, “I really like the sauce. Is that ginger I taste?” Or at the mall where I love to sit down at the MAC counter and have my face made up, the tight-bodied little artiste will adorn me with neon-pink eyeshadow that matches a newly released lip gloss, and then fawn over how bright my eyes look and how full my lips look. "Holy moly. Get this stuff off me. I look like Bozo’s psychotic mother-in-law,” is what I’m thinking, but what I say is, “I was thinking of something a little closer to my skin tone. My make-up colors are fairly modest.” When she turns her back, I grab a tissue and wipe off as much as I can. That's the sort of thing I do often during the course of my day.

But what would happen if I told the truth about my life? What if I told the truth about the fights I had with my three older brothers in the basement of our house on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York? What if I told the truth about being on the school bus for an hour each way, the things other kids talked about, the way the bus driver spoke to us, and how many objects were thrown from the windows into the cars of innocent co-travelers on Brooklyn’s streets? What if I told the truth about being the first black girl to graduate from Poly Prep, about the things girls did and talked about in the locker room, about being surrounded by boys and girls growing up in Mafia-connected families, and about the drugs and alcohol that flowed so freely right there on campus? What if I told the truth about my freshman year at Williams, about the Political Science professor who taught me about Argentina, and the Englsih professor who introduced me to the underbelly of American politics as demonstrated by the invasion of Grenada? What if I talked about my rage against corporate America (even though this computer was paid for by two of the world's largest conglomerates), against most manifestations of religion in our nation and around the world, and about how disgusted I am with all the ways that the name of the God I love is dragged through the corridors of politics, power, and even our churches with absolutely no regard for what I understand His name to mean and represent?

What if I finished these sentences out loud, here in this blog, or in the presence of people who know me, trust me, and call me "friend"?
• Even though I love being a wife and mother, there are many times when…
• I really hoped that marriage and motherhood would be more like…
• If I hadn’t married Steve, I would be…
• The decision I most regret is…
• What was I thinking when I…
• If I had the chance to relive that moment, I would…
• If I had a million dollars to spend in any way I wanted, I would…
• If I knew that no one would ever find out, I would …
• If anyone knew the real me, the me that hides behind the image, I would…
• The thing that wakes me up most often in the middle of the night is…
• I think our President is…
• I wish this country would…
• I wish I could live in… because at least over there, the people don’t…
• At church, when I watch the choir sing and the pastor preach, I wonder if…
• How is it that people can call themselves Christ followers when they …
• If I weren’t a Christ follower, I would…
• I thought being a Christ follower would mean I wouldn’t have to deal with…
• Many times when I close my eyes to pray, I’m really thinking about…
• Who does she think she’s kidding when she says that kind of thing? Who do I think I am when I say most of the things I say?

I know that I am not the only one with these sorts of unfinished thoughts, sentences, and questions floating around in the miasma of my mind. I know because when I’ve had a second glass of wine with friends, they divulge similar secrets. I know because after the awkward pause in most conversations, the truth begins to ooze out around the edges of the polite banter. I know because my journal is full of these types of sentences in their completed forms, and everyone else I know who keeps a journal or writes with any regularity gets the same gleam in their eyes whenever I mention the cathartic nature of what Sabrina Ward Harrison calls, “spilling open.” I know because there is a blog (at least one, anyway) dedicated to finishing this type of sentence. Feel free to check it out at: http://postsecret.blogspot.com. The secrets posted there are outrageous and mundane, individual and collective, and each time I surf over there to see what’s new, I am secretly relieved that so many people out there already know so many of my secrets.

What would happen if one woman, one man, one boy, one girl, what would happen if I told the truth? I suspect that the majority of the barriers erected so solidly between spouses, parents and their children, extended families, blended families, friends, neighbors, and neighboring nations would unexpectedly, delightedly, and perhaps even permanently fall. Alas, I will likely never know. After all, I didn’t finish these sentences myself, did I?