What Lies Between Us

by John Marrs

‘A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.’ —Charles Spurgeon

It’s only now that I recognise the wretched life you cloaked me in and how your misery needed my company to prevent you from feeling so isolated. There is just one lesson I have learned from the life we share. And it is this: everything that is wrong with me is wrong with you too. We are one and the same. When I die, your flame will also extinguish.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to ‘untell’ people. I don’t think you can ever be normal again after losing something you were so looking forward to loving.

If I guess the culprit correctly, I’ll be disappointed at how predictable the story is. If I get it wrong, I’ll be annoyed at myself for not spotting it earlier.

Once upon a time we were the best of friends. But that was before he destroyed everything. Now the two of us are little more than the debris he left behind.

Nina is no longer my little girl and I am no longer her mother.

‘I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends.’ I wonder if that includes family members too.

I keep most people at arm’s length for a reason. If you allow an emotional attachment to develop, eventually that person will disappoint you. They might not mean to, but if a better opportunity comes along, they will always leave you for it. I’ve learned the hard way that people – even loved ones – are transient souls.

‘You can never really know a person, no matter how much you love them.’

I thought that having a baby meant that I would always be loved by someone until the day I died. I was wrong. Being a mother is no guarantee of anything.