Trials and tribulations

Have you ever found yourself in a situation defined entirely by perception, and come to the realization that no matter how sure you are, that the truth is still somehow not quite what you thought it was? That somewhere in the middle of this and that lies the truth and no matter how much you circle it, you may never actually reach it?

I was raised circling the truth and found that while everyone thought they knew the truth, no one actually has the whole story, except those that can no longer testify, the truth, the REAL truth is yet elusive all these years later? years later! Does it continue to matter? Indeed it does, for without the soul of the past coming to light, there is no understand of what was and what may yet be. There is no closure, yet to bring the spiraling circle around the truth ever smaller causes untold pain and suffering to others. My understanding is sacrificed on the altar of my refusal to cause that suffering. Completing my own circle of family is sacrificed on the altar of my refusal to cause that pain. Some of it is selfish. But of selfish half-truths comes selfish half lives. Of deceit and refusal to communicate; of words and actions taken in anger comes the child of that anger, now a mother herself, unable... nay, unwilling to complete the circle out of a perhaps misguided refusal to seal a circle that most are happy enough to leave with frayed edges, to lead a double or even triple life as a result. It stretches me too thin sometimes, and yet at other times is so natural as to seem almost that it is how it should be. I cannot upset the delicate balance that has been built over the course of my lifetime, and yet I hurt for the lost youth, the missing memories, the absences, the failure of the previous generation to put their pride and their hurt to the side and do what is in the best interest of the children. And yet, I think that they somehow thought they were doing the right thing. I think they ALL thought they were doing the right thing. And yet, at 35, I know so little of some of the members of my generation and I feel the pain of that loss. I know I am not who I was born to be, for that has been denied to me, and yet am I the person I am meant to be?

I find myself in a position where I am driven to refuse to allow that history to repeat itself, and yet find myself in the position where I am now the adult in a family that is recreating that cycle. I must find a way to teach without preaching, to move this family of which I have become a part in the direction I feel so strongly is necessary before the next generation feels the loss of missing memories and cries the hot tears of regret for the actions of the adults that should have known better, and yet I let the days and weeks and months and years slide past unchecked until it is far to late. Shame on me.