The Good Liar

by Catherine McKenzie

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

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.

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.

“Everyone’s different, and no one’s better than anyone else,” Tom said. “Some people are luckier, and some people have bad luck, and some people work hard and get things, and some people work very hard and don’t get things. We’re all entitled to the same respect.”

I deserve to be someone’s first choice. I deserve to be someone’s sun.