Truthfulness
What a gift it is to read or watch something unabashedly truthful. I re-watched Fleabag the other day. It is such an ode to humanity. ‘People are shit, and people are all we have.’ Goes a conversation between the titular (ha-ha) character and a woman who’s just won a women in business award. And that pretty much sums up the heart of the show. I remember reading an article about how relationships wear out over time, and the only way for them to not wear out is that every time there is a conflict, you resolve it 100% with no residue, it was written by some professor kinda person and so I took it at face value, and it isn’t wrong, as I can attest to in real life. But fleabag shows that relationships just ARE, you can’t steer them so cleanly. They are fragile, but also remarkably resilient. People are shit and people are all we have. Every single character in the shows lives up to this truth.
Why do we hide this duality in our relationships? When me and my boyfriend decided to move in together into my apartment I felt that I would have less space. After we moved in, I woke up one more feeling I have more not less. And yet the literal fact of having less space is also true. Both things can be true, and both things can co-exist without feeling bad about one feeling and feeling good about the other.
I am reading another one of Sedaris’ essays and he brings the same kind of truthfulness about his marriage and more.
Truthfulness is groundlessness, but what kind of ground is it to live with a half-truth?