19. Courage and Painful Truths

“I have one more ‘if’ that worries me,” Mick said.  “I don’t know if my boyfriend is the father. If he isn’t, I’m screwed.”  She explained her boyfriend of five years was a wonderful human being who supported her getting sober, and who’d make an excellent father.  She described the other candidate as a ‘smoking hot coke dealer’ she slept with because she was really, really drunk.  She feared his rich and powerful family.

“My plan,” Mick said, “is to not tell my boyfriend he might not be the dad until a year after the baby is born.   That way he’ll have bonded with the baby, and won’t want to leave me no matter what the paternity test says.”

I started to tell her why I didn’t like her plan, but her expression told me she already knew.  I said, “We live in a culture striving to make life as convenient and pain-free as possible. Artificially so - everything is OK, everybody gets a trophy.  I know I sound preachy, but sometimes we have to find the courage to face painful truths. Sometimes we have to be truthful with people we don’t want to hurt.” She nodded her head. I thought how often finding that courage was so much harder than lying to oneself, or hiding the truth from someone else. 

If I must, I hope today to have the courage to face painful truths.

Writing My New Story © 2015 by Ken Montrose

Other publications available at: http://www.amazon.com/Ken-Montrose/e/B001K8MG0S

 (Just a reminder: Writing My New Story is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to anyone you might know is purely coincidental.)