The Truth Doesn't Need a Gatekeeper

A lot of what I talk about here at What The Halo comes back to connection. Connection to ourselves, our intuition, our experiences, and the things we know to be true even when someone else sees them differently.

But what happens when someone else has been telling your story? What happens when a version of you exists in rooms you’ve never been allowed to enter? What happens when protecting that version of events becomes more important than allowing people to discover the truth for themselves?

There’s something strange that happens when a lie has been told for a long time. Eventually, it stops being just a lie. It becomes a story that has to be maintained. People have to remember what was said. They have to explain away the things that don’t fit. They have to decide who is allowed to speak, who is allowed to ask questions, and sometimes even who is allowed to have relationships with whom. Because the most dangerous thing to a carefully controlled narrative is another person having access to the whole story.

If something is true, it doesn’t usually require this much management. Truth can survive questions.Truth can survive two people talking to each other. Truth can survive someone saying, “That isn’t how I remember it.” A narrative built on half-truths, omissions, assumptions or outright lies is much more fragile. It needs gatekeepers. It needs people speaking on behalf of other people. It needs conversations to happen through the “right” person. It needs certain people kept at a distance because God forbid two people sit down together one day and start comparing notes. And sometimes this goes on for years. Long enough that people grow up. Long enough that relationships disappear. Long enough that someone who was once incredibly important becomes a stranger.

That might be the saddest consequence of controlling a narrative. Eventually, the story stops being about what actually happened and starts affecting people who had nothing to do with creating it.They inherit it. They grow up believing things they never personally witnessed. They form opinions about people they were never given the opportunity to know. And meanwhile, the people on the other side are living with an entirely different version of the same history. That doesn’t mean every disagreement has a villain.

Memory is complicated. Families are complicated. Hurt people remember things differently. Two people can absolutely experience the same situation and walk away with different truths about how it felt. There is a difference between having a different perspective and actively controlling someone’s access to another perspective. There is a difference between saying, “This is how I experienced it,” and saying, “This is the only version you are allowed to hear.”

As people get older, they deserve the dignity of making their own decisions about their relationships. They deserve to ask their own questions. They deserve to hear from people directly. They deserve to decide who someone is based on their own experiences rather than inheriting somebody else’s opinion of them.

Eventually, people become adults. Eventually, they get curious. Eventually, they start putting pieces together. And when that happens, you can either trust the truth to stand on its own or you can keep trying to control the narrative. But here’s the thing about the truth, it always comes out because it has always existed. It doesn’t need everyone to agree with it. And it certainly doesn’t disappear because someone was prevented from hearing it.

Sometimes the truth just sits quietly for years waiting for the moment that the light touches it in photographs, memories, letters nobody has read yet, and in stories that were never given the opportunity to be told. And if the day ever comes when someone genuinely wants to know, they deserve the chance to hear all sides and decide for themselves.

Telling your own story isn’t controlling the narrative. Preventing everyone else from telling theirs is.

Maybe this story isn't about lies but rather it's a story about connection. It's about what happens when connection is interupted by somebody else's version of the truth. The relationship we lose when only one side of the story is given. Its about finding your way back to yourself when you've spent so much time wondering whether someone else's version of the story is louder than our own.

I think part of truly being connected to yourself is learning to trust what you know. That has been a HUGE lesson for me. When you can recognize that someone else's perception of you does not become your idenity, that is the gift. Real connection doesn't need to be managed or controlled. The truth doesn't need a gatekeeper and neither does connection.