I learned some time ago that if you cannot tell the truth about yourself, you cannot ever know it about other people.

Franz Kafka wrote of honesty: “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Eight years ago, I sat in a therapist’s office in Saratoga Springs. It was a bitterly cold snowy day, I had driven long hours through an ice storm to meet my appointment, I was desperate for help and never missed a single appointment, I thought I would break apart if I did.

I will always remember the moment, I looked out the window at the snow swirling in the parking lot outside, my therapist, who I had come to trust and respect, looked at me and asked: “you know you’re not married, don’t you?” It was a shocking, even stunning thing to say to someone who had been married for 35 years and expected to be married until death, and who never, thought for a single second, that he was not married.

The therapist explained what she meant, and I saw the shattering truth of what she said. I was not married. It was a profound and even horrific moment for me, and for several reasons. I had been married a long time to a very good person and the very idea of being unmarried was shattering. And then, there was an equally horrific realization.

I didn’t know the truth about myself. I didn’t know who I was. My life was built on lies and delusions. If you’re lonely when you are alone, said Jean-Paul Sartre then you are in bad company, I was in bad company. I left the therapist that day and called my wife and I told her that we were in trouble, and we needed to talk about it.

A few months later, we separated, and then filed for divorce.

I saw that I was living in delusion, in a sense, my life was a disconnected fairy tale. I promised myself I would never lie or live in delusion, I would write openly and be as authentic as I could be, I would seek, as Kafka urged, to see the truth, to never bend or water it down, or try to make it logical.

I wanted to own myself, to be responsible for myself, and to stop editing my soul to please other people, or appease them, or live according to the fashion of other people.

I have followed my most intense obsessions mercilessly and unwaveringly: my writing, my photos, my love, my concern with animals. I know who I am, I am learning what I am, good and bad, and accepting it. If you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else, and if you do not know  yourself, you cannot know anyone else. My great fortune at finding love was the first sign that I was on the path to honesty and authenticity.

Because you cannot find true love if you do not know the truth about yourself, and when you find it, you will suddenly feel safe and calm.

I suppose I will never really and finally get there, to complete authenticity, our lives are often shaped by many things, including, sadly,  the judgment of others. We tell the truth, said Sartre, by being honest again and again and again. This was one of the hardest things I have ever had to learn, and it is difficult still. All of us often define ourselves by what other people tell us we are and make us think we are.

There is no more difficult question in my life than “who am I?” My idea of who I am is perpetually under siege, it seems every day someone is telling me what to think, who I am, who I should be, who I am not.  This is not a war, or a bitter conflict, but a process without end, I accept it. I am learning to be direct. To say what I feel.

We are challenged again and again, and urged to bend. If I bend, I will break.

Today, I called a valued friend who was struggling and overwhelmed, she asked me to call, she wanted to know what I thought. “You have to get help,” I said, and she said she would. Just like that. And I felt good and true to myself, and I felt good about her, and her courage and strength. We were so honest with one another.

In this way, I am learning who I am, and I mean to never again in my life sit in a chair on a wintry day and have a stranger tell me the truth about my own life.