Truth

NOUN

• the quality or state of being true
• (also the truth) that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality
• a fact or belief that is accepted as true

Origin

Old English trīewth, trēowth 'faithfulness, constancy'

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/truth?q=truth

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Truth be told, I have a perception of myself that is decidedly different from the perception other people have of me and that makes me feel bad because it is just as disjointed as the perception others had/have of my family and the reality of what it was to be a child-adult in that space and, truth be told, I'm not sure what perception of me is truth, my own or 90% of the inside-outsiders and that makes me question everything about who I am and how I am and whether I am and whether I should be or could be or deserve to be anything at all when I'm not sure whether what I know I KNOW  because, truth be told, I grew up being told to shut up whether there were words or actions instructing me to do so and so I questioned everything and everyone and kept that questioning to myself where it, undoubtedly, caused cancer and so, truth be told, I believe myself the cause of my cancer and when I find myself as sad as I am again, for the zillionth time, I wonder what came first, the cancer or the sad, as though as simple as a chicken and an egg, and they are, I suppose, because they are each a part of the other and knowing how parted--how siloed--the parts seem but how intertwined they are, in each moment-to-moment I fear, because I appear so parted from my family but know we are so much a part of each other, how long it will take until, bit by bit out of me will sneak the mental illness that is theirs, and the addiction that is theirs, and the hurting that is theirs, knowing full well, they are all mine as well and so, as I contemplate truth and telling, truth be told, I've no idea where to begin or whether to begin or whether it is I've already begun the process of threading together the pieces I doubt and know but doubt and then don't and toss and turn, closed off in a head, inside a body, inside a person who doesn't perceive herself as person, though the perception of others forces more questions to toss and turn and wrap around myself, but to keep to myself, as a struggle of speaking truth while still being shut up and so, truth be told, I wish I could be more sad and more angry and more hurt and more afraid because I know I can be those and yet cutoff from the depth of them because feeling wasn't something I was supposed to do or meant to do or didn't do in order to protect the person I don't believe myself to be, I swim in, expecting to truly understand feeling and, as a result to understand alive, but I guilt myself into the name-calling because this masochistic non-person swims in the pool that hurts in an effort to try to learn how to feel rather than the pool of positive because that pool is not unlike an ice lake but, truth be told, no one would believe that goes on inside me because I'm still 'shut up' and seem positive and loving and caring and all these things they tell me I am and which, in the moments I may be being them, perhaps I am, but when I try to take them after the fact, I deny just as vehemently as being called by name because, truth be told, existing isn't easy and I never expected it to be, because honestly I just don't expect except when the expectations come from the same old pool, yet it doesn't look that way to you, and truth be told, that's probably OK in some ways but I wish, I think, that the truth I told looked even more OK, even more of whatever it is you want it to be in whatever way it can lift you from the pool you may be in and drowning with pockets full of stones because, truth be told I don't want my story to end with me swimming in the wrong pool with a pocket full of stones even though, I'm pretty certain that's the amniotic fluid out of which I was born.