To write most sentences is to lie by omission. To select x number of words is to choose not to tell the whole truth. Even if we knew it, even if such a thing exists, even if we always know what it is that we know.
In twelve step programs they say that “More will be revealed.” In my twenties huge chunks of my earlier experience were unavailable to my consciousness. It’s unclear to me that I deliberately suppressed the early experience. Maybe more likely, I was too busy creating an identity I could live with to handle, integrate, the early experiences into my view of the world. I’ve known men, not me, who woke up one morning at the age of 24 and realized that they were gay (or longed for monogamy, or didn’t want children) but with no memory of ever having considered such a possibility before that morning.
When I was in school I was bullied. I don’t recall ever saying that before. I felt (feel?) so much shame about it that I couldn’t tell even a therapist. However, in school I also bullied. That, unlike being bullied, was something I only remembered, admitted to myself, quite recently. I could write a thousand pages about how those experiences have formed my character and influenced the way I behave towards others. But I don’t think I bullied because I was bullied. I bullied because it was part of my nature.
I’ve written that in writing Aubade I wrote everything I knew. But I didn’t. The book was thought of as daring, but I left out what I was ashamed of, or what even that reckless child knew would be considered beyond all acceptable thinking in that place at that time. So I lied by omission then, and maybe later I lied deliberately through shame.