The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out

by William Dameron

There are many nights I find myself, pained, still wondering what years of being married to a man in hiding—a man like me—does to a woman. At

There is so much underlying heartache in this sentence.

how our secret kept us far away from loving ourselves.

Without sadness, happiness cannot exist. On

as most people would do, I focused on the praise and ignored the warning.

When it comes to emotional harm, queer people take risks every day just living their lives.

We were all learning to walk the long, rocky road of forgiveness.

Forgiveness takes time, but brings healing to broken and hurt relationships

Though we might try to forget the past, it does not forget us, and like the tide, it returns, sometimes with great force. My

Forgive is derived from the Latin word perdonare, a word constructed of two smaller ones that belie the enormity and complexity of its power. Per, the first of the two, means “for” in the sense of “completely.” The second is donare, meaning “to give.” To forgive is to give up completely, a concept that is foreign to our society, one that is taught to win at all costs. And so, the act of forgiveness first requires an unlearning—an undoing. Katherine’s and my undoing was the beginning of our story of forgiveness. In order to begin the process of healing, we had to first shatter everything we thought we knew. What must be given up completely in order to forgive? If it is a smaller offense, let’s say someone accidently tripped you and they ask you to forgive them, the offering is small. There was no malice or deception, and so giving up a sense of pride, of feeling hurt for momentarily looking foolish, is all that is required. You both move on rather easily. As the size of the offense grows, and the length of its duration expands, so too does the act of forgiveness.

It can be helpful to know and understand the motivation of the person who hurt you in order to forgive them, but it is not necessary, because forgiveness is a solitary act that requires only one participant.

Forgiveness is not given to help the one who hurt you, but to navigate through the pain in order to free yourself.

Before forgiveness could enter, anger needed to be extinguished, and like wildfire it would often jump paths and spring up in surprising and terrifying places.

We are all of us an assimilation, a collection of bits and pieces of everything and everyone we love.

The real journey has been learning to love my authentic self, not the image I had created.