truthspeak

I am addicted to the truth. Sometimes more than is wholesome. It has lead me to be too curious at times, and when compelled by social convention or external need to tell the "white lie" it hurts, bad. It is a violation of a core principle, it is battery acid in an open wound.

I don't like games, I don't like being patronized. I don't believe in the lesser or greater value of individuals, just their suitability to a given moment, place or purpose. I love both strawberry ice cream and chicken livers, but accept the fact that there is no way those two should be placed in the same blender together.

I write what is true. I can be arch, even brutal, in my words. But it is still the truth that I speak, setting aside the politics of the moment or the big picture in order to truthspeak.

This makes people uncomfortable, and at times I feel a great pressure to conform, to fall back and into the morass of social gamesmanship. Make no mistake, I know my way around a conversation and a manipulation and like Tom Selleck's Quigley, I may not have much use for it, but I didn't say I don't know how to use it. I can be a master manipulator. Someone the other day asked me how it is possible to take free will from another person. I can think of a hundred ways, some more awful than amusing, some merely cruel diversions.

I fight every day not to implement them in my life. I save my manipulations for myself, my rationalizations for the dark and angry times when I need someone there I trust to have my back. I haven't really found anyone who has lived up t that station, so I remain, as one old friend calls me, the Outrider.

I write well. People buy my books. I have enemies. Some for real reason, as I cuckolded them. Sorry. Some just out of envy or confusion or misinformation. I had a friend go out to the web and find twenty things about me, without filtering or editing. Then she and I looked at them. Nine were true, five were half-truths. Six were blatant inaccuracies. There are days I feel the pressure to hide, to give up, give out, give in to the inevitable.

Sorry, I can't. I tried. When you cool the fire, it dies. I've been dead, inside. It isn't pleasant and it eats at you when you know you can do more, say more, be more and to the benefit of others. As long as there is good purpose to me and in me, I will exist. I have made mountains of money for clients. I have inspired love between two people, been the spark to conception that has resulted in more than one child in this world being born. I have placed myself in harm's way for both friends and strangers.

The path is still obscure, but I feel my way with unfaded passion. I have a few good battles of the soul left within me.