Chapter I - Unfolding
Truth is rarely convenient or easy. It hangs around in areas we don’t regularly visit, patiently waiting for the time we cannot avoid it any longer. At times, it comes in the form of an individual—a face that is somehow familiar and yet somehow burdensome in its depth. It is not judgmental but stays. There’s a strange heaviness to the manner in which the presence of truth can substitute memory and perception with nothing other than time and proximity.
Often, there is truth where the shadows run deepest—where the darkness is heavy; deep woods, where sun barely reaches the earth, and roots turn and curl like snakes, shadows breathe. Finding it is often a commended awakening to some awful and lovely truth—shattering the tissue-thin assumptions we’ve constructed and held on to for a lifetime.
Yet, truth can be so much nearer—tangled up in the intertwined mundane; present in a look, a gesture, a sorrowful thought. Its threat is its ease, how quickly it is overlooked until it bursts forth—constantly insisting on being noticed.
Truth is a master illusionist. Enveloped in daydreams, laughter, comforts—comforts that sedate us. But when it does come, it envelops away the known, fearing safety, rewriting what we believed we knew into something alien, unavoidable, and makes it impossible to get back.
The truth always comes shrouded in the most surprising forms. As a nightmare masquerading as a daydream, it waits for you to perceive it—for you to face the shadows hidden in the known, the everyday, and the underappreciated. And if you cannot see it clearly, you will never forgive yourself.
