The Telling

There’s a saying in twelve step recovery that goes, “We are as a sick as our secrets.” As miserable as it is to vomit the gross stuff up, the truth is, we always feel better when we do.

Not just better, actually. Healed. Clean. New.

So why is it so impossibly hard?

A few weeks ago, I listened to a podcast interview between Hillary Frank, the host of The Longest Shortest Time and Zoe Zolbrod, author of The Telling. The interview was provocative, and although the voice of the guest grated a bit, I was intrigued enough to buy her book.

The book, too, was provocative at times and also grating.

Zolbrod, in essence, reveals that she was repeatedly sexually abused by an older cousin when she was just four years old. (I say “in essence” because she also writes a great detailed deal about her sexual precociousness and affairs through college and early adulthood.) While the telling of what happened to her as a child is grimacingly painful for her, to the point that I ached at her bravery, she seems almost proud of her later relationships, risky affairs that seemed built largely on super charged sex.

“See? Not traumatized by what happened to me. I like a lot of sex. In fact, let me tell you about it—in stimulating detail,” she seems to say.

I exaggerate. And oversimplify the premise of the book.

But I as I sit here with the book finished and closed, I wonder at the telling she does, what she’s proud to say and what terrifies her. How she seems to have resolved her god-awful experiences as a little girl, why she doesn’t blame her parents, and how she keeps fears for her children tamped down.

What did this telling do for her? Is she more clear and whole since she let her secrets out? Or less so?

But the biggest question is this: What drew me to this book in the first place?