Last week, I confessed a secret I have been keeping for most of my adult life, a secret I never planned to tell anyone. In my last year as an undergraduate at NYU, I was in an abusive, dangerous relationship. By the end of my final semester, I was physically, mentally, and emotionally beaten down. Two of my classes required research papers in lieu of final exams. I could not find the fortitude to finish either paper, so I never did. Everything else is true- I did get into law school, I was an LSAT tutor, I decided a career as a lawyer wasn’t for me before I lost the wherewithal to write those papers.
The truth will set you free. But I still can’t tell it without explaining the extenuating circumstances. Do you think that’s old shame peeking through or just human nature?
I completed (nearly) all of the coursework for my degree but I never *really* graduated college. And so I lied- almost always by omission “I studied English at NYU”- for about a decade. To everyone! I thought I would take this secret to the grave. I had many reasons for justifying deception- the main one was that I did not (and still do not) feel that I had less than a full college education- that this wasn't the same as dropping out halfway through and pretending to finish. I still believe that! But my education and intelligence did not make it true that I had a degree. What is the old saying? ‘Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades’? And the weight of shame is so heavy. Shame makes us do things we didn’t imagine we were capable of doing.
One day in March, I woke up with this overwhelming feeling. Hannah, what are you doing on this boat? You have the money and the distance to go back and re-take those two classes (it has been enough time that I didn’t feel it was worth asking to write papers that were due a million years ago and I was excited about the idea of dipping my toe into an academic setting as an adult) get off this boat and go back to college. I called two of my best friends and confessed. I expected them to react with shocked disappointment but (thankfully) neither of them did. Both said something to the effect of “this happens all the time” or “oh, did you know Jack went back and did that last summer?” They both said I should go back. I reapplied that day and was admitted a few weeks later.
Not everyone in my personal life has reacted as positively. And that’s okay. While it is my belief that honesty and truth are more grey than we’d like them to be, not everybody has a complex understanding of authenticity. I lied and people are allowed to be angry about that. It was a betrayal.