I read somewhere that the only way to write is to bleed on the page. So here goes…

The girl remembers the time that she knew that she was different and maybe alone.  She just does not remember how old she was. It was fall, and cold .She didn’t like the cold. It was so cold at the bus stop, waiting for Mr.Gant the bus driver to pick them up, all the kids in the neighborhood, the boys older than the girls. The boys seemed so old, mysterious and mostly nice (except for the one who was later to be diagnosed as mentally disturbed, which the girl knew even then, because normal people are not cruel, correct?)

Who am I trying to kid. I am no writer. Although the crazy boy and Mr. Gant did exist (and he was wonderful, Mr. Gant-I always felt safe in the bus), they are completely incidental to this girl’s story. (Although I feel safe in buses to this day, and I instantly tune out people in whom I detect the least hint of cruelty)

I hope that cruelty is something I will not be accused of when I die. We won’t really know ourselves completely until we stand before the King, will we? I know that we get glimpses into ourselves and into the souls of others, (there would be no hope of repentance or redemption without it), but to really know moment by moment who we are or what we are capable of?

Does God leave us mostly in the dark for this reason? To spare us that view, the ugliness inside ourselves?

 There was a time when I considered my life so uneventful and uninteresting that I lied all the time. I became quite proficient at it, actually. Lying is something that is scarily easy to perfect. One or two verifiable facts (I was there at the farmhouse, I was 17), woven together by half truths and outright fabrications. I never did it to hurt anyone; just to save myself some grief usually, or to make my life seem more appealing.

Once or twice I did it to hide things that I knew I couldn’t bear (he did rape me in that farmhouse, in the barn, actually, even though he said I was beautiful-did that make it alright?), or to spare my parents’ feelings, but mostly I lied because it was easier than seeing the look in peoples faces that said that I wasn’t enough. I lied to ward off rejection.

Not that this is an excuse, of course. And to be fair, I am sure now that most of the rejection I felt was probably imagined, but it became self fulfilling, and I became a loner, or alone, or whatever you want to call it.

People became “out of sight, out of mind”, and sometimes it worked.

I remember in detail the biggest bully of my childhood, Larry M, who later became a political consultant (Truth!) and tried to derail the career of our states first female governor, but I can only fleetingly see most of the people who probably loved me. I hate that.

I was a fat kid, and Larry was merciless.

I don’t lie anymore, at least not to other people. I’m probably still self-delusional, though. At times, the grandiosity of my wishes astounds me. When Paul tells us that the Lord is able to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think, I believe that this is true. I just have not seen it yet.