It is no easy task to get comfortable with searching for the truth — let alone finding and confronting it. What do you do then? Some people deflect the truth, diluting its brew because they are not totally ready to accept it and all of its ramifications. Others deny it because they are more confortable with the prison of denial — the truth does set you free, and freedom is a foreign concept to many of my fellow students at the University of Skid Row.
Part of my truth is that I want to develop my appeal as a writer, and I have found that the number one appeal of a writer is honesty. The writer must be honest. I believe that by honestly revealing his or her own truth, a writer can give readers the strength they need to be honest with themselves.
Teachers learn from students, too. Indeed, you readers can count yourselves as students of this curious college, even if this is a satellite campus. But you are learning my truth, and this act of telling you my story teaches me to be ever-more honest and accept my own truth, wherever it may reveal itself.
I had that sort of revalation some time ago at the Transition House, where many of the students at the University of Skid Row must go for basic coursework. Yet I've only recently begun to understand importance of this encounter. It rang in my ears for a long time before the lesson became clear.
I had been at the Transition House for some time; I had made the jump from rookie to veteran. A newly arrived rookie sat down next to me on the patio one evening. It's a quiet place, and I would usually sit there and look at the Downtown skyline and let my mind go, trying even then to search for the truth and learn to accept it. The rookie began to explain to me his reasons for relapsing and smoking cocaine.
I looked in the sky and stared at the moon. I had made some progress. I had put down the crack pipe nearly seven months earlier. I knew that the man next to me was closer to the moon than he was to his own truth. He was conning himself, and I had no patience for it. But I stayed with the conversation, and suddenly my own con became clear. I was still smoking cigarettes, you see, and that's an addiction that's not supposed to be part of my journey. It suddenly became very clear to me that the cigarettes would have to go in order for me to be healthy. I told the rookie of my revalation, and it created some common ground. It opened the door for me to tell him the truth of how bad it had been for me when cocaine was my smoke of choice.
"You see, my friend, I was sick," I told him. "Very, very sick."
It was a magical moment, one that I cannot explain. Perhaps I had to get down to this simple honesty in order to help this man begin a quest for his own truth. Or maybe its vice-versa. In any case, it helped me begin to accept my own truth in a way that I had not done even as I progressed with the chemcial and social aspects of my addiction.
The conversation ripped away an opaque veil that had been covering my eyes for so long. I could never be more honest with myself than I was at that moment. In time I would grow to better understand and appreciate the depth and range of my illness. In fact, I am only recently beginning to understand the intricate development of that illness, and all that it infected.
My talk with this rookie, this fallen-down cocaine smoker, might have been the most important moment in my life — it gave me a reference point for where I had been and where I want to go.
This revalation did not end of my the search for my truth. It was a big step on the journey.
And the journey will continue next week.
Walter Melton is a writer for the L.A. Garment & Citizen.
Visit Walter Melton's blog at www.scribeskidrow.blogspot.com.
Photo for collage from Wikimedia Commons
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