The Tell (Oprah's Book Club)

by Amy Griffin

The opacity only made it more important to me—a game with no discernible rules that I still had to figure out how to win.

Whatever the game was, I was not playing it right.

There were a lot of things that just weren’t talked about—not out of insensitivity but more to insulate the kids from adult realities.

There were so many memories, so many of them lovely. I hadn’t been placating my mom when I told her that I had beautiful memories here. I did. Things had not been perfect. There had been pain, secrecy, and shame. I had suffered in silence. And yet, and yet, and yet.

Yes, there was a place for convenience. But not everything needed to sit tidily on a shelf. Some things were messy, difficult, or impossible to contain. Some things defied easy categorization.

But recovery was an ocean, and I was learning how to swim.

Remembering isn’t something you do just once. Remembering is a practice. It is something you have to be brave enough to do over and over again. To face the monster under your bed and to discover that there was never a monster at all but the child you once were, a child who has only been waiting for you to come back home. And then, when you forget, or blot it out because the pain is unbearable, to gather your strength and face it again. To return to this fundamental truth, no matter how many times it takes.

Life was so dissonant in its beauties and its horrors, so full of irreconcilable truths. Telling was a way to reconcile them. Telling allowed me to process, to keep going—to live.