I sit with my grandmother, I am visiting from out of state. My hand placed atop one of her ice cold, paper thin ones; noticing how the blue veins intersect like highways. She is dying. She doesn’t want to eat, or take her medications. She is a stubborn-ass Greek woman. Four foot eleven inches. A beak of a nose, dark beady eyes. One sharp gaze could shut you up real quick, it felt like she could see straight into your soul. She, the tough loving matriarch of our family, has little control over anything in this, the end of her life, so she’ll control what she can.
“Yiayia, you need to eat something for breakfast, Mom told me you didn’t eat anything all day yesterday.” She is silent. Her pills, also untouched, beside the breakfast plate.
“Why should I?” It is a statement, not a question. “I’m dying either way.”
“Well, you’re here now, and as far as I can tell you’re not going anywhere today, but you don’t feel good, so put some food in your belly, take some medicine and maybe you’ll feel better.” I lower my voice conspiratorially, “If for no other reason, do it so everyone else shuts up, will you? They’re driving me nuts.”
She laughs, it turns into a rattling cough. Now she places her hand on top of mine, patting it, “Leesha, you always tell the truth. Some day it’s going to bite you in the ass.”
Actually, it’s been biting me in the ass my whole life. To be the truth teller in a family full of liars is a blessing and curse. One of the many dysfunctions of my family of origin is their inability to face hard truths or be accountable for anything, ever. You’d think they were janitors based on the amount of shit they sweep under the rug. At this point, it looks like there’s an elephant trying to hide under there.
The chaos and confusion that my sisters so readily ate up and internalized, I have always understood, as abnormal. It’s not their fault. Their roles were assigned, and it was safer for them to go along with them. But as the sensitive child, you notice things others don’t. You also learn pretty quickly, it’s not always safe to let on what you know. This resulted in me being an unusually quiet child who wanted nothing more than to be left alone with my books. Just biding my time. Leave me out of your bullshit until I’m big enough to call you on it.
Confidence born of raging hormones and years of bottled up emotion, made my teenaged years quite tumultuous. Gone were the days of observing quietly. I’d been such a good girl and it still was never good enough to spare me from their toxicity. So I got mad. I had absolutely no respect for them, because they had none for me. Children were, at best, mere extensions of themselves; at worst, possessions. We were not considered to be individuals with deep interior landscapes of our own. They did not live their life or parent in a way that could ever earn my respect. So I spit back every abuse I was served. I pulled no punches. Don’t think of slapping my face if you don’t want to get slapped back. I called them out for every shitty thing they did and said. In short, I was a holy terror of a teenager. Sorry, not sorry. You reap what you sow.
They still lie about so many things, big and small. They don’t realize I can SEE them. My safety and security, as a child, depended on studying their every move so I could be prepared for whatever nonsense was coming next. I know them better than they know themselves. Which isn’t hard, they have no internal mirror. This is why, as an adult, I have only the most boundaried of relationships with them.
My dad is just braggadocious and bombastic. His lies tend to be more exaggerations than outright untruths. Sad, more than anything, because you can see the deep well of insecurity these lies spring from. As an adult, I now understand the extent of my mother’s mental illness. Her lies are compulsive. Nonsensical. The innocuous, frivolous ones are easiest left ignored. When the lies are designed to stir the pot and start drama, my patience wanes. But as my children have gotten older and she has tried to lie TO and ABOUT them; I’ve had to draw a hard line. The challenging thing about it, is she believes her own lies. When confronted, even with the strongest of evidence, she will.not.give.in. That’s when the gaslighting and character assassinations kick in. Followed by the shaming and guilt. No one in her life can rip her heart out like I can. To be fair, confrontation, after being caught in a bold faced lie, probably is heartbreaking, to her. What is more painful than coming face to face with your most toxic trait?
It’s hard always being the one to whom the truth matters. It’s lonely being the only one not content to just knock back half a dozen drinks and gamble; carrying on like everyone in the room isn’t trying to toe their past hurts back under the rug, with all the others. It’s exhausting being the one always prepared for the almighty uproar that will ensue if someone accidentally steps on the elephant’s tail. And it’s usually me stepping on that tail. I’m terribly clumsy.
Empathy carves the path toward true forgiveness, though. How painful to have to construct a life of lies rather than face up to the realities of your actions and who you’ve become. How easily led astray is one when generational lies get interwoven into the collective “truth”. What a prison to be so enmeshed with those who continually hurt you and cannot be trusted, because you can’t bring yourself to speak up.
The janitors will never know true peace. There will always be a mess, of their own making, to clean up. Eventually you have to take the trash out, before the rug won’t cover all you’ve swept under it.
A truth teller needs to be willing to look at their own part, and by doing so opens themselves up to the self awareness that is necessary for honest connection and inner peace. A truth teller knows which messes are hers to clean up and keeps her elephant right out in the open. It’s much safer there.
My grandmother ate her breakfast and took her pills that day. Everyone asked me how I did it, I just shrugged and said, “I told her the truth.” Sadly, they still didn’t get it. When you’re getting ready to knock on death’s door, the last thing you have time for is more bullshit.
little victories 
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