THE TRUTH

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>This isn't just a coming out story.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>It's a coming through story. Through silence. Through shame. Through every unspoken rule and whispered slur.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>In The Truth Cannon W. Stiffler bares it all-grief grit glitter and grace. Told through a series of raw poetic and fiercely honest essays this memoir captures the heartbreak and hope of growing up gay in a rural conservative Appalachian town where the cost of being different often feels impossibly high.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Cannon writes for the kids who are still hiding under their own bedsheets the ones who flinch when someone says faggot in the hallway the ones who check every room before they dare to breathe a little bigger. He writes for the ones who have survived by folding themselves smaller and smaller until they almost disappeared.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>This is not the version of queerness the world tries to package in rainbows once a year. It's the truth-the brutal beautiful truth. The loneliness of the closet. The ache of digital love and ghosted promises. The invisible scars carved by shame. The complicated battles over body beauty and belonging. The myths and realities of pride. And most of all the small fierce daily acts of choosing to live when it would have been easier to disappear.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The Truth is a letter a battle cry and a love story to anyone who's ever asked Am I allowed to exist like this? It's for the ones still asking. It's for the ones still unfolding. It's for the ones who survived when no one was looking.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The answer is yes.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>The truth is: you always were.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>And it's still unfolding.</span></p>