Recipe in Futility - That Ain't No Cake, Anna Mae!

Have you ever tried to turn a lie into a truth?

I have a story about it.

I’m creative. I used to make petticoats for hand sewn Elizabethan Barbie gowns out of used Bounce sheets when I was little.

I made sensory toys for my son when he was little – crackly plastic, aluminum foil, feathers….inside of scraps of African material so he could feel and hear the differences in textures in things that look identical.

I can do all types of amazing things with food – Perrier pound cakes, chocolate cardamom banana bread, amazing 5-ingredient barbeque rubs.

And I almost figured out how to turn a lie into the truth.

It wasn’t MY lie. It was just the one I decided a long time ago not to see.

I moved into its home, pregnant, scared, wanting to do the right thing. Not bring shame.

I locked it out of the room one night when it came home after the sun came out – hanging with the boys.

But I said “I do”.

I put it in a red dress on vacation in Florida and was amazed and afraid of the attention it got.

So I cut its hair and then let it grow again.

I put it in heels that I bought and he bought.

And then I cut its hair again and wrapped it in 4 yards of cloth for at least five years after I added a new baby to it.

And then it peeked out around year three of the 4 yard era and I sought counsel to learn to live with it.

And lived with it I did.

And then I dressed it in less cloth because it seemed like it was making some kind of truth metamorphosis.

So I loosened up. Relaxed a bit. Dressed it in sweats every now and then. Got it some new friends.

It gave me a tumor and three kick-ass visits to the hospital with three weeks of intravenous antibiotics. I cuddled it close like my portacath. Even when it kicked my ass down another three flights of stairs. Again. Mm- hmm.

I believed it again in counseling. Even when it said there was really no room in the schedule and the counselor determined that the problems were inside my head and not with the lie.

I dressed it in jeans. Sexy ones. Got it a new job.

Almost let it take me out, but I found the strength somewhere to hold it closer, tighter. This is a figment of my imagination. A creation of my own delusions. An isolated event that I need to treat as such. I am the difference. Life is 10 percent of the lie and 90 percent how I perceive it.

I am but PERCEIVING being lied to.

It’s not true because it’s just a PERCEPTION. Remember?

People should be free.

Unbound.

It’s just PERCEPTION.

No such thing as monogamy.

Why are you binding yourself to the box society says you have to?

A new way of looking at it? Okay. I followed the lie because, why not? Life is all PERCEPTION, right? So if I don’t PERCEIVE it as a lie, then it isn’t.

I took it on a fabulously shortened Vegas vacation because it didn’t have time.

I worked a whole week of vacation into 50 jet-lagged hours – a different bikini every day.

Molded it into something I could stomach. Hid it behind the new, improved, liberated, creative me. The honest, writing, wine drinking me. The “reaching my peak” me.

And on September 27th, I decided to read that white piece of paper that had been flashing before me for weeks and weeks and weeks.

And the children, cloth, counseling, rent, haircuts, bikinis, mortgage, counseling, wine, vacation, counseling, new car….

it all.

Came.

Tumbling.

Down.

And all that’s left is the lie that I could never make true.