Dear Elizabeth (now Anonymous-ed):

“Are you in any way suggesting am lying about my experiences?“- yes, about some of your experiences. I think that you exaggerated, that is, that you misrepresented some situations (not all) and some people (not all) as worse than they are.

“Why on earth would I go through so much trouble?“- I think that it’s something like this: a child falls and scrapes his knee,  it hurts, so he goes to his mother and shows her his knee with a few tears in his eyes. Her response: oh, it’s nothing! Don’t be a crybaby and waste my time, bothering me with nothing! Fast forward, the child/ adult exaggerates future injuries so that his mother/ people will think that his hurt is Something, not a..  nothing!

People tend to think that if a person has no way to benefit financially from lying- then the person is not lying. But this is not the case because there are different motivations to lying, including in a forum like this.

“Reading this last post from you makes me very angry. Yes, I admit I got my timeline mixed, but that doesn’t take away from the things I went through. it doesn’t take away from the fact that I had a horrible childhood, or that I was bullied by my own parents“- I believe that you really did have a horrible childhood and that you were bullied by your parents.

“I am hurt and in need of healing that I need to find a solution for my emotional issues. Or the fact that I need to do better for my son“- it is counterproductive to healing to misrepresent any part of your life story by lying/ exaggerating. You don’t have to tell the whole truth at any one time, but what you do choose to share should be true, best you know. It doesn’t mean that your timeline has to  be 100% accurate, no one’s memory is perfect, far from it. But remembering that you met Christopher a year ago (about October 2020, “a year and some months” after July 2019) and then re-remembering that you met him over 2 years ago (in August 2019), is quite unbelievable.

When you misrepresent some of your story to fit a point you are trying to make at a particular time, people are likely to doubt the parts of your story that you did not misrepresent- so it’s not  a good idea to misrepresent/ lie/ exaggerate any part of your story.

“I love my son. I am working this hard, dealing with the uncomfortable in order to give him a better childhood“- good to read this!

“I have said enough“- you decide how much to say and to whom, but if you are focused on healing and giving your son a better childhood, then see to it that what you do choose to say is true best to your knowledge and understanding.

anita