Families

I am visiting my family.

My memoir is about them in some way. It starts in their too-tight hug. There are moments when i detail my life when I was living under their roof. It makes me nervous but I must tell them about this somehow. I should let them read it.

It exhausts me just thinking about it. The fights we will have to have, untangling which parts of my own life belong to me and which ones are theirs to censor. Of course I won't budge on any of it. I am a stubborn creature when I choose to be, but I will not abandon my work because they tell me to. I will lose whole chunks of it to make the thing cleaner and more tight. I will listen to the friends I trust who tel me what is working and what is not, but I will not play with the truth to spare them. My family.

This sounds cruel but it is a slippery slope. If I lie for one I must keep lying for all of them. And what I value most in my life and in my work is my honesty.

Instead I will dig my heels into the ground and take the blows as they come. I will weather the idea that they may never speak to me again, despite the fact that this hurts me and I will be sad.

So I am visiting my family and maybe I will tell them what I have been working on and maybe I will return in tears, wiping my helmet with the back of my glove, frustrated that I still can't see the open stretch of road before me. Six hours on the road, one night, one confession, then six hours back.

I feel exhausted just thinking about it.