I met today’s guest blogger at my very first RWA conference in Dallas in 2004. She (and Rocki St. Claire) told me how to breathe life into a dying scene. She does it well. I’m still working on how to tilt the story’s head back, pinch its nose and inflate its lungs. Please make room in the swings for Katherine Garbera.
Living the Lie
We all know that telling a lie is wrong but we all still do it anyway. I'm not talking about big lies, but the little small white lies that we tell friends, acquaintances and even sometimes ourselves. Lies have a way of just becoming accepted sometimes. And in most cases that's okay. But in some situations it can end up hurting you.
I was married for 17 years before I found out I was living a lie. Not a big lie that would hurt anyone but a lie that I had been telling myself. I had the "perfect" husband--everyone said so and that was the lie. I knew that my husband wasn't perfect and that beyond the façade of our marriage it wasn't solid. Yet at the same time I didn't want to let on to anyone that it was less than perfect.
I'd made this image of a nice family where everyone was exactly as they were supposed to be and after a while it was hard to say things aren't working out. Or my life isn't what I've been pretending.
Now this lie didn't hurt anyone...at least I don't think it did. I think that most of us are telling little lies to ourselves to keep up the façade of being happily married or happily employed or whatever other role you are pretending at. I think that most of us are living a lie of some kind or another because in our society we are judged by what we are good at and frowned on by our failures.
A perfect case to prove this is the fact that two of my neighbors stopped talking to me when I got divorced. I no longer fit in on our street or in their eyes in a neighborhood. I didn't have a husband to fill out the party partnering that happens in suburban American. Does that mean that I shouldn't have been lying to myself all those years?
I don't know.
I think this is one of those situations--the lies we all live--that is a necessary evil. I think if we are true with ourselves and admit that our lives aren't perfect and if we can somehow become okay with it then maybe we can move on...I mean me--maybe I can move on.
But letting go of perfection is hard.
This is something I've been exploring in my writing. My upcoming book from Brava THE PIRATE features heroine Daphne Bennett and she had been living the lie of a perfection marriage with the perfect children until her husband pulled the rug out from under her and let the world know that all wasn't as peachy as it had seemed.
She is facing her summer alone as her kids are going to their dad's and she needs to escape. So she volunteers with Doctors Across Waters and heads off to Somalia finding more of an adventure than she expected to.
Writing about Daphne gave me a chance to explore some of my feelings about my marriage and marriages in general. I still don't have the answers but I think that I'm getting closer to them.
What about you, are you living a lie? Do you think that we all are in some way?
I have two copies of ARCs of THE PIRATE to give away to two blog participants today.
P.S. You can find out more about Katherine and her books (she also writes for Silhouette Desire and HIS ROYAL PRIZE is a May release from Desire) at her website, http://www.katherinegarbera.com/. And OMG is the guy on her cover not H-O-T?!?!?
