The Good Liar

by Catherine McKenzie

No one had told her, before she had children, that being a mother would be like reliving her own childhood, only worse. That she’d have to re-feel all the slights and worries a hundredfold.

We’d gone to bed in angry silence, the air thick with our words.

our anger a reverse magnet neither of us had the strength to match.

It’s one of the things that drive you crazy, the what-ifs of unexpected loss, even though life is full of them, too.

Another thing to take care of tomorrow, tomorrow.

I suppose there’s a time in everyone’s life where you discover you’re a fool. Sometimes, maybe, it’s a slow revelation. For others, there’s a moment when it becomes obvious.

one year later and how everything’s changed but kind of stayed the same?”

Better to accept the things I cannot change and all that, like an addict, even though I’m the substance being consumed.

He didn’t want to be the sun and the moon and the stars: just the stars would do.

because we were just the stars, one of us might start to miss the moon or long for the sun.

even the brightest of stars may dim as the years tick by because of compromise, because of time, because of life.

And if you’re used to the stars, however clear they may be in a country sky, how can you even see them if the moon is full? What chance do they have in the face of the sun? If you looked at the sun for the first time, really looked, after all that stargazing, you’d be blinded. And then sunlight begins to feel essential in a way it never did before; starlight pales by comparison.

Depression’s a funny thing. We don’t know what to do about it—as a society—unless we’ve been there ourselves. The person before us is not someone we know, and their unhappiness is often not something we can understand. So we downplay it, and we make the afflicted somehow to blame. No one would ever tell someone with cancer that if they tried a bit harder, if they got out of bed and took a shower, everything would be better, but people told her all those things. That and more, worse.