In the nonfic class I turned in "Actualization" for, we're required to submit a reflection letter with pieces that are up for workshop.

Many of my peers were of the opinion that they thought the scene on the hill was effective, until they read my reflection. Once they found out that the scene hadn't happened as written, it suddenly didn't work for them, and some even contested my claim that it was a work of nonfiction. I was somewhat agitated by the [albeit polite] attack, because that information isn't supposed to be available to the reader. If that scene honestly represents the characters and the relationship, then it's still nonfiction. The conflated creation of that scene doesn't mean that the essay is somehow less true. I was staunch in my belief then, and I still maintain that I'm right.

That issue is not at all why the essay is dishonest.

I don't write about myself. Ever. Rule #2, if you will. What's dishonest about "Actualization" is that I refuse to allow it to be about me. It's "safe." I got 11 response letters from workshoppers, and only one of them even came close to detecting the mask I was wearing by writing the piece. In a fast, tangential comment she wrote, "Chris was a messed up kid--our country is full of them—but…what separates Chris from every other messed up kid is YOU." In writing the piece, I picked and chose everything that happened in it to keep from ever having to say something radical. I avoided subjects that I might be uncomfortable talking about.

When I wrote about Chris’ blog, I chose to write about a picture that, while potent, was safe. The picture I should have written about was a MS Paint drawing of a woman resembling Chris’ mom, carrying a sign that read “I hate my gay son.” I didn’t write about that picture, because it kept me safe from having to confront the time I spent rehashing every memory I had with Chris, reexamining every moment I spent with him in the light provided by information about myself I didn’t have during my time with him.

I didn't write that the first time I ever skipped church, I went to see Chris. It was during my sophomore year of high school, after I'd figured out why I never had posters of female singers more popular for their cleavage than their talent hanging in my locker. He, and his mother, were surprised to see me. I spent the entire hour I should have been in church lying on his bed, watching in silence as he played video games, wondering what it was that was so different, almost awkward, about our being in the same room once again. When the church service was supposed to be over, I left quietly, and it was the last time I ever saw him.

The most important facet of my relationship with Chris is that, in retrospect, I probably fancied the boy.

I can even avoid individual words when I want to.

I wrote an essay about Chris and avoided that topic completely.

I didn’t say that I miss him.
I didn’t say that he haunts my dreams.
I didn’t say that I think, with alarming regularity, about what might have been.
I didn’t say “I think I might have loved him, and I think it might have been mutual.”