What Is Your Value of the Truth?
“The truth has cost me two marriages, and now the lack of it is costing me a third one. Whether I tell it or not, I lose.”
“You are leaving me after twenty years of marriage?” Joseph Millard demands as Carol, his wife, packs her bags.
Carol, zipped the third suitcase and asked, “Why did you think I married you?”
“Because I was handsome, and you needed a man?” he teased.
“You were handsome,” she admits. “But I fell in love with you in high school.”
“So why did you marry me?” he asked.
“You were the only human I know that tells everyone the truth. It takes strength and guts to tell everyone the truth,” Carol explained.
Joseph stared at his wife in shock, then asked, “You are joking? Right?”
“Joe,” she said easing towards him sitting in the armchair facing the foot of their queen-sized bed. “Why do you think you have almost no friends and lots of enemies?”
“Because I tell the truth?”
“Yes!” she blurted out. “You and your life taught me that the truth is nobody’s friend. And most people can’t face it and some refuse to live with it.”
“So why are you leaving me?”
“You no longer like the truth or want to say it.”
Joseph burst out laughing sliding out of the chair on the floor. Carol gazed at him on the carpet laughing as if he was being tickled.
“Thank God you are taking it with joy. That lifts a heavy weight off my heart,” Carol said with sarcasm.
Joseph got up off the floor, then reminded her, “My first marriage lasted four years and she divorced me because I kept telling her the truth. My second marriage lasted three times as long and my need to always tell the truth destroyed another marriage.”
“They didn’t want the truth?” Carol asked.
Staring at her pain in his heart, rushing to his eyes, “Now my third marriage is going to end because I start believing that the truth works best at the right moment and time. Isn’t life weird?”
Carol stared at her husband of twenty years, and said, “You didn’t take the time to know your two ex-wives.”
“I knew them, why did you think I told them the truth,” he defends.
“No, you didn’t!” Carol protests. “If you did, you probably would have lied to save your marriage.”
Reality touched his brain, and he released in regret, “And now I am going to lose you because I was not aware that you wanted the truth.”
“I am sorry, but that’s the one trait I admire about you.”
“I was raised to believe that the truth will set you free,” he recalls.
“It did,” Carol says. “You became a free man after your two wives divorced you. I couldn’t have married you if you weren’t free.”
“And now the lack of it is freeing me again,” sadness flowed from his heart.
“You have turned into the people you despised,” she told him. “Is that how you are going to spend the rest of your life?”
“I love you, but I learned late in life that the truth depends on which side you are on and how you benefit from it,” he said.
“I like that,” she said easing closer.
“I also learned that it’s not my place to be telling everyone the truth. Plus, the truth sometimes is like fine wine. It goes better with common sense, responsibility, a better understanding of life and living,” he elaborate easing away.
“What?” she shouts.
“As red meat goes with red wine and seafood with white wine, the truth works best with common sense,” he explained further.
“You are saying that common sense is what you are using now to cover the truth?”
“I found out late that at some point I will have to take responsibility for going around telling everyone the truth.”
“More excuses Joe,” she throws at him.
Sighing, he stared at his wife, regret in his heart, and said, “I am over sixty Carol, the truth has cost me two marriages, and now the lack of it is costing me a third one. Whether I tell it or not, I lose.”
“So you will stop revealing it?”
“No,” he said staring at her perplexed. “I will use common sense and place it where it’s needed!”
Carol nodded, picked up two of her suitcases, walked towards the door, turned, and said, “When you are ready to go back to the honest man I fell in love with, call me. But don’t wait too long. The truth is patient, but I am not!”
The truth depends on which side you are on and how you benefit from it. Annelise Lords
If your heart could speak, what would it say?
Mine would say, “The truth is like water, it will find a way in or out! — Annelise Lords
Thank you for reading this piece. Please, let your heart speak, while enjoying more from some inspiring writers on this platform whose links are below.
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https://readmedium.com/annelise-lords-footprints-on-her-heart-b838bfa7b684
