It started with Norman Vincent Peale and his Power of Positive Thinking book, which came out in 1952 and was a precursor to the Positive Affirmation Movement. My relative bought it and believed. In doing so, at first, she was just ignoring the bad and promoting the good. Seeing the glass half full.
She had made it through the Great Depression as a teenager who had to quit school and went to work cleaning houses. No shame in that. Now, distanced, she stood high on a pedestal, a Greek Goddess. Hera. Enthroned in her kitchen where she gave dollops of wise advice the same way she plopped buttery mashed potatoes on my plate, next to the stuffed cabbage, when I visited.
I ate.
But moving forward, like President Donald Trump, she had taken to talking in the present about things as if they were true. She took to condemning those, including me, for living outside her philosophy of life, for questioning, and for discerning the truth. The real truth.
My relative became more dramatic as she aged. She told her stories, in which she starred, over and over again. The stories co-starred her husband and children who worshipped her.
I was so sure she had more stories that one day I called her and mentioned my father told me they'd gone hungry during the Great Depression.
"It never happened!" She yelled into the phone. She went on, going opposite of everything he said. I believed him. Not her.
My father had so many stories about things he'd done for food.
I used to believe everything she said.
One lie after another.
They piled up like rocks on a corpse.
Once she lied to others long enough, she believed her lies to be truth.
C 2021
