I’ve been thinking a lot about truth lately.
Who tells the truth and who doesn’t
How it is withheld
How it can be spilt, and vomited
How it is bent
How it is wielded like a weapon,
How truth can slap you in the face with a wet fish and
How it can be co-opted, manipulated, constructed and modified,
discovered, uncovered and revealed.
All in all, truth is a funny thing. It’s complex, multi-dimensional, it’s like trying to grasp running water. It can be a slippery beast - so damned slippery and elusive, but glaringly obvious at other times. Sometimes brutal and harsh, and then at other times it is beautiful in its rendering.
For me, the truth has been, and continues to be, dangerous.
It is dangerous because I am the guardian of other people’s truths, and my life has depended on my ability to defend those truths and to keep them buried beneath my rib cage, safely nestled, even when they have eaten away at my beating, crimson heart.
The very first truth I was called to hold, was that of my mother’s existence. I don’t remember my mother’s voice, the silkiness of her skin, the smell of her perfume, the way she walked, the colour of her hair, her eyes, or the way her hand felt when it was clasped in mine. When she was killed and the blood poured from her body onto the bitumen of that greedy highway, all the love she had for me, went with her. We didn’t talk about my mother after that tragic night. The memory of Glenys got tucked away in the box with all of her clothes and sent off to the Salvos. It was ‘too painful’, my father said, as he drowned his grief. But she existed, she was real, and the truth of her existence nestled in my soul bones and all her DNA that coursed through my veins, rest uneasily in my body, calling out for her to be. Who was she? Who was she? Who the fuck was she?
The next big truth that I kept secret came with my first husband. I’d like to say I had been brought to my knees by someone extraordinary, but actually, he was a very ordinary man who abused me in very ordinary ways. I kept that a secret for so long - quite impressive really for a big mouth like me. Everyone that knew us thought we were a happy family. No one could see what was behind the image of the doting wife, the seemingly devoted husband and the three beautiful children. I never let anyone get close enough to really see us. I hid his truths so well that his image of the quintessential ‘nice guy’ remained intact long after we separated. I kept that secret so well that I even went to prison for him.
And prison is where I really found out about truths. It’s certainly where I found out the dangerous power truth can hold.
Prison is a system built upon binaries – good/bad, guilty/innocent, true/false, truth/lie, honest/dishonest, screw/prisoner…
I didn’t know the world in this way back then.
When I went to court, I believed that if I told the truth I would be ok.
[the truth will set you free]
I was deluded. I believed that the justice system was ‘just’. I believed that good would prevail. I believed that if I took to the stand and told my side of the story, that if I told the truth (and nothing but the truth) that I would go home to my three kids and all this ugliness (and craziness) would end. That the system would realise they made a mistake by arresting me for these crimes, that they had the wrong person, and they would punish him and not me. But it doesn’t work like that, does it? The truth does not set you free. Things are just not as simple as that. The world is more nuanced and multi-dimensional, and there are complexities at play that we don’t even know about.
Because humans are complex, and they are rarely telling the whole truth.
The prosecutors certainly weren’t.
The police on the stand weren’t.
My husband absolutely was not.
And while I withstood two days on the stand and vomited all of my truths from my body, purging them in an attempt to free myself, I kept one truth tightly in my chest… the violence I was experiencing at home.
So, I was found guilty.
Guilty, in spite of the truth.
[Fuck!]
On that day, I received a sentence of 6 years and eight months, and the criminal punishment system became the new narrator of my truth. They owned me and my story, and they were able to write it in any way and in any place they wanted.
[guilty as charged]
The thing is, once the state has you in their clutches and you are a prisoner, everything is taken from you.
As soon as you arrive, they take your name.
[Prisoner #177057]
They take your clothes.
[Grey tracksuit – the colour of institutional bleakness]
They strip you naked and search every part of you.
[Squat and cough]
They take your humanity along with your dignity, and then they lock you in a cage. They own you, your movements, and your whole future is in their hands.
And amidst all that despair and emptiness, the only thing you have left after they have stripped you bare, is the truth about who you are and what you did. So, you lock that truth away in your heart. You stash it in your chest, behind your rib cage, and you lock it down with a million padlocks so no bastard can touch it.
After all, it’s all you have left.
You guard that motherfucker like it’s one of your babies.
Time ticks on and you serve your time, and your parole hearing comes up. You sit before the panel of white faces, and they want you to talk about your “offending”. They want you to tell ‘the truth’ to prove that you are ‘rehabilitated’ and finally ready to admit to your crimes, to ask for their forgiveness to prove your remorse – prove you are, in fact, redeemable. You look at them, staring straight into their beady soulless eyes and think to yourself, ‘where the fuck did the truth get me anyway? I spoke my truth and all it got me was a 3x3.’
You want out of there, so you think about giving them what they want. You actually consider vomiting their truth from your jaws, you think about masking your anger with contrition - but even the thought of betraying the truth that is tucked away in your chest makes bile rise in your throat. You swallow it down and you panic because the silence is growing, and you’ve never been good at awkward pauses. And you think to yourself, the longer you stay quiet the more guilty you look. Come on Tabitha, you know their games, you just gotta play it this one. more. time.
At this rate, the ‘truth’ of your ‘offending’ is like a Rubik’s cube – it’s got so many sides and colours now, and everyone’s had a go, so it’s all jumbled up. Your mind is racing, your heart is conflicted, thoughts of home dominate your mind, so, you speak a version of the truth. Words keep tumbling from your mouth, you skirt around the truth, talking up your mistakes, you vague out on the detail, and you put on your best and most remorseful eyes. You embody truth and honesty and you be as repentant as a Catholic on Sundays. Even this image of yourself is making you sick. But the State loves this version of you. They love seeing their ‘truth’ embodied…literally. They love seeing the criminalised body repented. They love seeing us on our knees atoning for our sins – the sins they have decided are ours to own, to pay for and to they choose when and if we will be forgiven.
With a slight curve of their thin lips, sideways glances, the quintessential ‘we’ve got her’ looks, they grant your parole, and that little box that held your one important truth, now looks like a battered parcel that’s been rattling around a delivery van all week. Your head and heart are heavy because you just sold your soul to the devil for a teensy bit of freedom, you’ve danced in the depths of hell and the souls of your feet have blisters for your efforts.
But waiting at the gates of hades to pick you up, is your kids. And like three tall beacons of hope, stands truth embodied. Truth that you are a whole person. Truth that you are not what the system says that you are. Truth that you are not disposable and that you will always be something to someone. And you skip out of those fucking gates looking back, not for the sake of nostalgia, but to say quietly to yourself, ‘fuck your truth, I know who I am and you will never tell me what or who I am again.’