There is a tattoo on my body that says "truth."
I got it at a time in my life when truth felt like the most important thing I could chase. Relationship after relationship had unraveled into lies, and I had decided: never again. I would be the person who looked directly at things, who didn't flinch, who found out. I was relentless about it, honestly. If something felt off, I dug. I asked the uncomfortable question. I stayed in the conversation past the point where most people would have walked away.
I believed that knowing the truth, whatever it was, would always set me free.
Reading these latest chapters of The Last of the Moon Girls, I found myself watching Lizzy with a kind of quiet recognition. She is doing exactly what I used to do: pushing past the discomfort of a town that very clearly does not want her asking questions, pursuing something that most people around her would rather stay buried. She is dogged in the best possible way. She is refusing to let the story be what everyone has decided it is.
And I admire her for it. Genuinely.
But I also kept thinking: Lizzy, I've been where you are. And it doesn't always go the way you're hoping.
The last time I went searching for the truth, it was a few years ago. And I think it might have been the last time.
Here is what I didn't know then, or maybe what I knew and chose not to think about: I didn't actually want the truth. What I wanted was for the truth to be something other than what it was. I went looking because some part of me thought I could outrun the feeling I already had, or maybe confirm it wrong. And when the truth showed up, it didn't set me free. It just sat there. It still does, actually, on certain days when I'm not paying attention and something small brushes up against it.
So I look at Lizzy's situation now and I see a distinction I wasn't able to make when I was younger. She isn't searching for the truth to feel better. She isn't looking for confirmation that her life is the way she hoped it was. She is searching for the truth because her grandmother's name has been dragged through decades of mistrust and suspicion, and Lizzy is the only one left who cares enough to clear it.
That's a different kind of truth-seeking. That's one I can get behind.
If I were in her shoes, I would do exactly what she's doing. No question.
But the kind of truth I used to hunt, the kind that was really just a question about whether someone loved me the way I needed, whether someone was who I hoped they were? I think I've learned my lesson there. Some truths don't liberate you. They just live in you. And sometimes the cost of knowing is higher than you're prepared to pay.
The Aletheia Lens:
Lizzy's pursuit raises a question worth sitting with: what are you searching for, and why?
There is truth that restores. Truth that clears a name, corrects a record, brings something wrongfully hidden back into the light. And there is truth that we seek because we are afraid, or because we want someone to prove us wrong, or because we are not ready to feel what we already know.
Both are valid. Neither is wrong. But they ask different things of us.
This week's reflection prompts:
As always, I'd love to hear what this week's chapters brought up for you. Drop your thoughts in the comments or bring them to our next gathering.
With you in all of it, Kristin