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The Writing Life: Truth and Lies





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"A fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing is safe." -- Mary Gordon


Over the years, I've tried to make sense of it, my father dying when I was just a baby.
Losing a father, or mother, at an early age is like losing a limb. There are fixes, a re-marriage of the single parent perhaps, but step-parents are prosthetics, nothing more. The limb will always be missing, you will always feel that hand, and there will always be a constant ache, phantom pain, perhaps, that never goes away.
Fatherless women, the sensitive ones at least, are often seen by other relatives as attention-seeking victims who act out in public and embarrass the family. That is what I was called last week by a relative who also called me "crazy".
"You always have to be mad about something," he said when I railed against someone who had written erroneously in my Ancestry.ca Life Story that I was the love child of my father who died in 1957 in a car crash. I had written about this on my Facebook, and the relative said I did it because "I want people to feel sorry for me."
"Thanks for your support," I said after enduring a litany of insults. 
And that was that.
I'm was not angry, not even hurt, when he described me as a "pain in the ass" growing up, a little girl who was more of an inconvenience than someone to be loved, and cherished. I'd felt that way all my life, that I wasn't valued by some members of my family who saw me as a weak child, always crying, too sensitive, at once, then loud and pushy, and at another time, withdrawn and sulking.
We all deal with our pain in different ways. Men are taught to keep a stiff upper lip, not to cry, not to look back, to move on like sharks in the seas. Women are taught to hide their pain in pretty dresses and fancy nail paint, to put their anger into the kneading of bread, and always smile for the camera even when they are hurting inside.
For the record, I do not lie, but I do report what I was told as a child by my mother and other relatives. I've had to live with rumours and innuendo that so hurt my mom that she used to take me to church and drop me off rather than endure the stares and disapproval of those who did not know her, the fine upstanding people in the community who couldn't be bothered to drop off a casserole when my dad died tragically.
Like my heroes like David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs, I do air my laundry, clean or dirty, in public in this space where I feel safe. I have also made somewhat of a living writing about my life in newspapers and magazines, and I have endured all manner of insults from the general public in the reader's comments where I was called a loser, a bad mother, a low life, and so on.
Unlike my mother, who followed the societal song sheet and kept on smiling and doing her hair, I have chosen a different path. I write out my pain and share it, not for people to feel sorry for me, but to make sense of my past and my emotions. Over the past 15 years since I began this blog, I have shared my story and my truth, and it has helped me tremendously. It has definitely been cheaper than therapy, and I truly believe I now am very well adjusted. I have no need for a shoulder to cry on anymore. I no longer have nightmares about bad choices I've made in life, I no longer feel that the world would be better off without me.
My life, my pain, my story  -- all have value, at least to me. 
I have no regrets, and I'm not capable of keeping secrets, so don't tell me yours.
And I could pass a lie detector test with no problem. 
Best of all, my children know everything. There are no dirty little dustballs under my bed that they will find when they come to clean out the house after my passing. 
When confronted by a relative at my funeral -- should I choose to have one -- with a salacious story, my children will shrug and walk away. They've read the reader's comments and they know the truth, at least the truth as I myself can make sense of it.
And as always, I tell people, if you don't like what I have to say, don't click on this blog.
I don't need the clicks, as this blog is not supported by advertising.
Just walk away.
Or leave a comment.
Maybe I'll read it some day.
But don't expect for me to get back to you.





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