Who can really tell what stories are made up and what are truths? How many stories are 'based on a true story' with a lot of the detail embellished to make the story more exciting? Where is the defining point that separates fact from fiction?
Here are a couple of stories - one is fact, the other is fiction. I bet you can't tell the truth...
In my normal work rounds, I met a lady yesterday who was a partial paraplegic using walking canes to get around, but also had a broken wrist, that had been broken since March, so it was almost impossible for her to get around without her wrist not repairing itself. She was selling her home because her husband left her for a 25 year old nursing student, and her oldest daughter followed her husband, leaving her alone with one high school aged daughter to fend for themselves. She couldn't work, and as a part of the separation she'd bought an apartment off-the-plan to live in, but that was caught up in VCAT (the Victorian Civil and Administration Tribunal) because the developers decided to put a 4th storey on the building after all the 3rd storey apartments had been sold. All the 3rd storey apartment owners are up in arms because they thought they were buying the top floor, but they hadn't. So the place she's moving to is running a year late in it's construction, and she is going to be left homeless if it's not completed within the next 4 months. Her husband doesn't pay her a cent, as they have equal share of looking after the children, so she's almost destitute. She gets a small disability pension, but that's it. Not enough to look after a 5 bedroom house and a daughter in high school. Such a sad story.
A single mum friend of mine has been seeing a miner who works in South Australia. They talk constantly via Skype, phone calls and emails, and they get to see each other once a month. He either comes to Melbourne, or she goes to South Australia. Her children are 5 and 4, too little to understand that their mum loves another man, and so she hadn't told them. He comes to visit or she goes to see him when the children are in their father's care. One weekend, her new man was over and they were having playful S&M sex on the living room floor. It was amazing, something her ex-husband would never do. As she was whipping his arse as he lay across the coffee table, her ex-husband decides to drop the children off early without letting her know. He didn't know that she was involved with another man, and what she was doing was highly uncharacteristic of her. It was highly embarrassing for them all, and she had a lot of explaining to do. She wasn't prepared to answer questions from her children about this man yet. She wasn't prepared to tell her ex-husband that she had moved on. But she also realised that the excitement with her new lover was separating her from the friendship she once had with her ex-husband. It all flooded back to her - the desires, the friendship, the love, the bond - everything that she had in her marriage she wanted back again in an instant with her ex-husband. She told her lover to go, and she'd call him, but only to tell him it was over. How does something like that make you go back? What is the trigger? What is in between putting her panties on and looking up to see her innocent children's eyes wondering what she was doing? Who knows... but most women who make the decision never go back. But for the sake of her family, she felt it worthwhile.
I'm not going to tell you which story is true and which isn't. But they are both believable, both are drawn on factual elements, and both are like any other story I have written in this blog. But for the sake of family and friends who read my blog, I am pointing out to you that whatever you read here has partial truths and a lot of elaboration to create a story to help inspire, compare, and give understanding to all other single mums who read my blog. The first story is tragic and reminds my readers that our lives ain't that bad and we must push forward. The second story is a tale of loss of identity that was overcome by the caring nature she remembered that her ex-husband possessed and she want it back again. It's a tale of hope for all those hanging onto their past loves.
I look forward to writing more tales of hope, discovery, life, loves and loathes that help make single motherhood more bearable.
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