Learning

What I'm coming to realize is that no matter how well you think you know someone, you don't.


Yesterday I learned that someone I have known my entire life is not the person I've thought. Twenty -six years of one idea, one way of thinking, one person that I loved, wiped away in one short, somewhat reluctant conversation. Its not that I think everything was a lie, not that I feel less loved or suddenly see dark, devious plots behind events that happened. My memories are happy, my life was good, and this knowledge doesn't change that. But the memories are also colored, stained, by this new understanding. Every memory reflects a different motivation, and a mistaken understanding of myself and my relationship with this person. For whatever reasons people have for keeping things like this to themselves, don't they realize the impact when the truth comes out? Don't they realize that people can't just accept that you hid something from them, forever, something that consumed so much of you? How do I just accept that and go on?

This has happened once before, with a friend of 4 years. I thought that was earth-shattering, my life turned upside down, my trust in others obliterated. A best friend, someone so close, who really knew me, and who I thought I really knew-a completely different person. Four years! I realize now that the shattering, the fear and lack of faith, only applied to friends, to temporary passers-by in my life. I vowed not to be fooled again into thinking I knew someone, that I knew who they really were. I wasn't perfect, but I thought I did a pretty good job, keeping people at a distance, accepting whatever they ended up being. I just didn't generalize those feelings to those of my family, those I have lived with my whole life. It seems I should have, but i trusted them implicitly. How can you be fooled by someone you live with for so long? While both instances reflect very different circumstances, the feelings are the same. This feeling of the earth falling out from under me is the same. I hate it.

Does everyone have a secret life?

I don't blame anyone. I don't love any less. It's the trust that's erased. I just took one step further from ever trusting anyone again. I wish I could say I'm sad about that, but if it prevents this from happening again, I think its worth it to me. This hurts. I don't want to let anyone else in, if only to be fooled into believing I know them, relying on them, and later finding out I was stupid, foolish, naive, blind.

I went for a drive alone, and I wondered-do I wish I didn't know? It was so simple, so chance, that we had this conversation instead of another, that I learned this truth I was completely oblivious to. Would I rather have lived in oblivion?


No. I can never wish for that. My obsession with knowledge, with truth, with being aware of what is really going on, does not permit me to ever regret the gaining of knowledge. I regret the ignorance I lived in for so long. I regret that this quest for knowledge forces me to want to know whats going on all the time, while at the same I'm being brutally forced to accept that I never will know everything, never will really know anyone, that they are always holding back, like a spy with a double life. I find this astounding. And demoralizing. But I'll get over it. I think, much faster than last time.

Maybe I am learning.


Please don't ask me about this. I needed to vent somewhere, to express my feelings, but I don't want to talk about it, and I'm really okay, really not even very upset. Yesterday there was a temporary shock, a re-learning of myself and a re-defining of my beliefs. But that's what life is, and we relearn and move on, so all is well.