My life was a lie. As a child I was both the baby of the family who according to stereotype, would have been spoiled and pampered and the little girl who was being sexually used by her brothers in secret. I could tell no one. There was no one to tell. When there is no safe person to tell, you just cringe and bear it.

When I was sixteen I was both the girl who’s father had “courted” with gifts I mistook for love and made to look like a vicious liar, though the lie that spread through the family never reached my ears until 1995 when my sister Valerie finally asked me what happened with Dad. Nearly 30 years that lie stood as a testament to my character and nobody thought to ask me if it were true.

When I left home, though I had not married Fred yet, I began using his last name as though we had married and that was a lie that I did not care about. I had to get away from home by any means. But the lie had its own punishment. I had carried the taint of childhood right out the door with me and no matter how far away I got it felt like everyone who looked at me knew instantly that I was tainted. It were as though the name DeGolier were stamped on my forehead.

There are always lies when husbands, or wives, get a new mate. Well, I assume so anyway. My husband was no different. I will not go into specifics. When my marriage was ending my husband admitted he had been trying to make me hate him and making things difficult for me so that I would pack up and return to NY. He did not know that there was nothing to return to. He took the car saying he needed it more and left me to work and try to care for four children with no washer and dryer so we had to make the trek 10 blocks to the laundry carrying one child and pulling a wagon of laundry. then we had to make another trek to the grocery store.

Looking back, that was the easy part. It became impossible when the landlord evicted us because we were five people living in a one bedroom apartment, the housing authority was only helping the aged and the disabled, and my mother refused to help because in Dad’s words “I would only take that damn fool back” he referred to my husband. Oh, and as it was in those days, when I asked for a raise at work the boss said I was a woman with children, go to welfare. Perhaps there was another choice, perhaps if Fred had paid his share of support, but I was backed against the wall. I took the kids to Fred’s place for him to care for thinking he needed to understand the mess we were in.

OK, that was a bit of explaining what no one has wanted to here, my side of the story.

Suffice it to say, my children were told not to listen to any bad stuff about Dad and his new gal, it was just sour grapes, after all. My one daughter was gaslighted with declarations that what she remembered from childhood never happened, it was just me telling tales.

Meanwhile Fred and his little bit of stuff could and did say anything they wanted about me while they were raising Fred’s “motherless children” in Cindi’s words. Every bad thing that ever happened was my fault because I was crazy. I heard little snippets all through the years and I had to live with the lies. And so did my children.

Meanwhile, I was a mess. I became obsessed with setting the facts straight, but in the end I just had to tuck it all inside and live with other peoples lies.

Most people do not necessarily want the truth. They decide how they want things to be and they take that as the truth. When I revisited NY in 2006 my sister Charlene apologized to me for not warning me about the minister who molested her. It seems that over the years around the campfires at the family reunion I was much discussed, not talked to of course, because I had not been there in many years. The conclusion was that “Whatever happened to mess up Janeen” was that the minister had sexually assaulted me.

It was a lie of course. I told the truth, not that anyone heard me, so making up their own lie to cover the shameful truth was logical. I laughed and told Charlene that the minister had never touched me. I made clear what happened to me and I am pretty sure she spun it her own way.

Lies are a thief. They steal the truth and twist and mangle it and you seldom get to set it straight. You live with it and you die with it and all the people who knew only the lies about you can shake their heads in wonder at the life you lived and perhaps even how awful you were. What happened to Janeen? Ask. Valerie asked. I told her the truth. Sadly she asked if there were alcohol or tongue so she could put it in perspective. Alcohol would excuse Dad apparently and tongue would mean it was sexual and not just plain ordinary horrifying abuse of your sixteen year old daughter.

My granddaughter a few years ago asked me about something she heard about me. It was a breath of fresh air. She had heard that I killed my mother just by saying I love you. Of course people had to twist and turn every little thing into something bad about me. If I had to guess, I would say Joyce started that one, but I do not know. She was incredibly cruel to me in the last years of her life. It was she who called social services on me to report I was abusing my sister Wanda. Wanda was livid. We went together to try to do something about the harassments by the family, but we were not believed. It is a fantastical story after all, and the easiest route is to believe the abuse. The social worker looked at me like I was a maggot. Lies, when told the right way, can soon be set in concrete with no proof at all.

The true story about my mother’s death? The last time she had abused me viciously she was a frail 89 year old but her tongue could slice and dice her enemy in a split second. I vowed to myself I would not see her again, ever. So when I got the call that she was dying at first I said I would not go to see her. I was in training as a truck driver and out on the road in southern PA. But I could not follow through. No matter how cruel my mother had been, I would get re-routed and go to the hospital. I called and my niece put me on the phone with her. She could not talk. I could only hear her labored breathing. I said the only thing I could say to a dying mother. I love you, I lied. I lied to a dying woman, what else could I have done?

A few minutes later my niece called and said she had passed. She said it was like she had been waiting for me, the only child who had not checked in to say goodbye.

I could run down a list of lies against me, big and little and I am sure many that I do not know about. Why was I painted in such dark colors by the very people who are supposed to support and care, family?

I hate lies. It is easy to see why. When I was a child I believed liars went to hell. Now I know that it is insidious lies that can make a person’s life hell on earth.