An Abyss called The Truth

Someone once wrote that 'When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you'.

I have been wondering these past several months about this elusive concept : Truth.

Accounting gimmicks attempt to dress shady books in alluring clothes. Sporting superstars try to hoodwink the adoring public even as they fornicate behind their families' backs.Salespeople and product pushers twist and bend the facts so much that their wares only remotely resemble what they paint them out to be.

Nowadays, it seems that only very young babies and animals are capable of communicating that most rare of commodities : the honest truth.

Even when they are found out and exposed, these lying entities then go all out to defend their lies,the affluent ones behind a wall of scheming, intriguing lawyers.

I often find myself in the same leaky boat that carries humanity along in the ocean of existence. Long inculcated with automatic guilt for telling even relatively harmless lies, I became resentful in my mid-30s when I chanced upon the lies that my parents fed me from years ago: to justify depriving me of a well-deserved holiday for a trip to the casino instead; to bluff me into believing that good grades were all I needed to succeed in life; to cover up the ugly facts about physical abuse in my childhood that probably contributed(together with years of aloof fatherhood)to my being gay.

But soon, I learnt to lie despite the guilt: denying my involvement in anything that I felt remotely guilty about; concealing an outing to visit a social escort in Sydney behind my family's back ; flatly denying that I was homosexual when asked point blank by my ex-godmother.

However, I was not always like this: I remember going against peer pressure(which included my elder brother's complicity) to run the full four rounds along the school perimeter while my other mates ran two but pretended to have run four; I recall handing over $10 that I found outside the school hostel office( even as my friend urged me to keep it) and handing it over to the Hall treasurer with a request to find out whose it was(On hindsight, I'm virtually certain he pocketed it-I would have too, at his age!).


The truth resides in an abyss: a hole so dark that many of us would not choose to confront it or look down its plunging shaft of our own volition. We merely throw inconvenient facts down that abyss every time we are compelled to deny them.

Sometimes, the cry of these discarded facts long abandoned and forgotten in that deep hole reaches up to us and we shudder.

Until today, I'm completely certain that my own parents would rather me dead than be forced to confront what they allowed to befall me many years ago.

That is the magnitude of the hold of fear that the abyss has on average people.

Recently, my 'father' suffered a mild stroke, but I merely shrugged my shoulders and said quietly to myself: 'That's life.'


Now, 18 months after I was forced to quit my teaching job of seven years and to overcome my depression and inferiority complex on my own, I start wondering if my own fear of confronting the abyss is dooming me to a life of a series of mediocre successes followed by larger failures.

The truths that I'm forcing myself to confront : that I am a difficult person, that I repel strangers with my brooding character, and my sexual inclinations, are such massive and overpowering influences that I almost give up trying to change them before I even start.

And yet, I remain mindful of them, and for the first two(forget the third one!) I can honestly say(really!) that I've chipped away at them slightly.



Many times however, I choose the easy way out and deceive myself that I am a fine fine person.

Hence, the sayings 'the brutal truth' and 'The truth hurts'.


Yet, I have continued to force myself to look into this abyss, but simultaneously try to release my anger at people who refuse to look down their own so that I can come to terms better with my own sordid truths.