I said I was okay.

Later, I cried.

Feelings run up on me like a motherfucker and disguise themselves as facts. Those bastard feelings are sneaky like that. The anxiety wants me to think this is forever. My shame gets me to doubt myself at every turn.

For a while, I thought that meant I had lied. I had said one thing, then revealed another. I told someone I was fine, then my writing showed that I was not fine at all. I wanted to go back and correct the record. I wanted to explain the whole thing. I wanted to overshare until no possible misunderstanding remained.

But I am starting to see my mistake. I mistook the moment for a fixed state. In the moment, I could not see the next moment. Even when I knew the moment was temporary, I treated the feeling as fact. It was not a lie when I said I was okay. I was okay in that moment. Then the moment changed. The feelings shifted. But the impression remained.

Let's begin with the feelings: She hates me. I ruined everything. I am abusive. I am toxic. It was all a lie. There is no coming back. I am unsafe. I am a terrible lover. I am unlovable.

The tears came. The grief came. The shame echoed in my mind. The self-hatred became an identity. My mind started turning itself inside out. The fractured mind began a war against itself, against me. One thought begins: “I am good.” Another thought, moments later, has me on the floor in tears, struggling with what I had done, convincing myself "I am not good."

That is not lying. That is feeling. That is human.

I was not lying when I said I loved her. I was not lying when I said I was a good man. I was not lying when I believed I would never hurt her, stand beside her, cherish her, protect her.

I was not lying, but I was refusing to see another part of myself: I can love someone and still hurt them. I can be peaceful and still become dangerous. I can be a good man, in intention, and still do bad things.

I wanted my intention to save me. I wanted to explain what I meant, what I felt, what I was trying to say, what I was trying to do, what I was intending, what I was... fill in the blank. This all seems so defensive now. It feels like I was trying to win. It seems like I wanted to be right. It seems like seeking to be understood and neglecting the other person's experience led me to a self-centered path that says, "if only you could see it my way." If they saw it my way, understood my intention, understood the context, that would soften the blow. I wanted that to be true. I acted as if it were true. I dismissed their experience as a misunderstanding, rather than the very real and legitimate hurt I had caused.

The explanation, the context, and the intent do not erase what I did, nor is the impact softened.

I can explain why I wrote certain things. I can explain the hurt, the confusion, the pain, the fear, the trauma, the shame, desperation, anguish, longing, sleepless nights, dreams, loss, nightmares, the incessant anxious mind on its non-stop repeat of blah blah blah, I am hurting. I have a good explanation too. I can explain it all.

And after all that explanation, the other person was still hurt. I still said those things. It still hurt. It still confused. It still fucked everything up and placed pain where pain already existed, and it placed doubt where hope may have been growing. It still made the thought of me an unsafe, inconsistent, and scary thought.

Although changing feelings may not be lies, they can become dangerous when I treat them as final. When I am hurt, the hurt feels true. When I am afraid, the fear feels true. When I am ashamed, the shame feels true. When I feel abandoned, the abandonment feels true. In those moments, I do not feel like I am interpreting temporary feelings. I feel like I am finally seeing reality.

A feeling is not a verdict. A moment is not an identity. A storm is not the climate. Not because every feeling was false.

Because I gave temporary feelings permanent authority. This is where the hard part begins. This is where I messed up and caused harm. I am reminded to not solve temporary problems with permanent solutions.

What happened to me matters, and what I did matters. I can tell the truth about both without using either as a weapon. The conduct of others may explain my pain. My pain does not excuse my conduct.

I had a belief that telling the truth was the ultimate kindness and love. People have praised me for telling them they have food in their teeth. They have praised me for telling them their zipper was undone. They have even thanked me for challenging them on thoughts that did not seem fully formed. I have received praise for being the mirror, for "telling the truth." It got confusing when telling the truth became a bad thing. Certainly, I agree that the way I said things was not always the best. As discussed, my words became weapons at some point.

I believed that love between people allowed difficult truths to be safely held in the space between them. If I am seeing something, thinking something, feeling something, or struggling with something, I wanted to share it all. I wanted to share everything with my best friend. I don't want to smile while resentment builds. I don't want to say one thing and be thinking another. I don't want a relationship built on polite omission and white lies. That feels like lying, even now, that feels like lying. I'm not a liar.

I did not think there could be such a thing as oversharing with the one I loved. I believed I was building love through honesty in those moments.

Honesty felt like love. The ability to be honest with someone has some connection to love. I'm not honest with everyone. I do omit politely and not share my true thoughts. I do that with strangers. Not everyone sees the world how I see the world.

There is at least some good in that kind of honesty. It needs some thinking beforehand because it can become dangerous when used without care. It's harder to use truth with care. The hard way shows itself again. It is slower and takes more time to use care and forethought when delivering a message of truth. My goal is to kindly share something they may not have seen themselves, in a way they can actually receive. The shortcut doesn't achieve the goal. The hard way, the slow way, is the fastest way to get there.

Truth is not automatically kindness. Truth is not an excuse to be unkind. Even my belief that something is true does not make it kindness. Truth without proper timing, consent, compassion, care, and humility can become cruelty while still being rooted in facts.

They might not care that they have a hole in their shirt, just as I don't care. If they care about the stain on their shirt, I might do them a favor to let them know about a stain they haven't seen. But if I take it a step further and make judgments about their person, saying something like, “you always have stains on your shirts,” knowing they are sensitive about that, I may have planted an insecurity without meaning to.

I could not see how my words could harm. I refused to see it. It was the truth, and however brutally honest, it was love, right? Wrong. I can see the harm today. It was not delivered with love and kindness. It was delivered as an indictment.

I thought the truth would save me from being manipulative. If I shared my feelings, then I was being honest. If I said what hurt me without sugarcoating it, then I was being direct. If I told my story no matter the consequence, then I was being brave. If I put everything out there, then no one could accuse me of hiding.

This can also be selfish and self-centered. My honesty can become an overwhelming flood. It can become a painful experience for the person caught in the flood.

My attempt at "honesty" may have been used to corner, overwhelm, punish, or force someone to carry the full weight of my emotional state. That is for sure not love. That's not how I want to be honest. That's not how I want to tell the truth.

I also don't want to become a liar. I don't want to pretend. I don't want to hide things. I don't want to put up a false front while resentment grows. Eventually, my resentment will boil over. It becomes that flood.

I don't think the lesson here is to stop telling the truth. I don't want to use honesty as an attack, then use honesty as the defense for the attack. The lesson is to stop pretending that truth alone makes me safe.

Truth needs compassion. Truth needs care. Truth needs kindness. Without those elements, truth can become condemnation, criticism, contempt, or control. Apparently, I was guilty of doing that very thing: leaving out the necessary elements.

I'm trying not to do that anymore. Not skipping the hard part. Not jumping straight to the conclusion. (Is anybody else noticing the overwhelming alliteration?)

When I deliver truth with compassion, care, and kindness, I am offering love and support, not condemnation. When I process my experience with humility and care, I am reaching for love and support, not control.

I am moving in this direction now. Not away from truth. Away from condemnation. Away from control. In the direction of compassion, care, and kindness.

**Commentary that leads me to the next chapter:

Something inside me still wants to scream loud enough for her to hear me from 10,000 kilometers away: “Sweetheart, I’m doing it! I am becoming the man you knew I could be!! Look!!!”

I want to scream from the rooftop with everything I know, trying with all my being, with all that I am, and all that I can be, so that my voice echoes down from the heavens like the whisper of an angel. But it is not an angel. It is just me, a regular guy doing regular things.

The hard part is doing it without needing her to look. Knowing she may never see. Feeling like she doesn't want to see. And still doing it for me. For my wife and children who are yet to be.