by Kelly Pelton

It dawned on me in my twenties, a dim grasping:
the woman who cared for me primarily
was not in fact representative of my gender.
I began to separate truth from lies, warily

choosing my battles, learning boundaries, erring
repeatedly, being ungracious, searching, suspicious, 
crying to God from disheartened vexation,
immersed in her narrative that was fictitious.

But I did not know then that she was deceptive - not
intentionally gaslighting - but caught up in her denial,
telling me I misunderstood reality.
"What's real? What's not real?" I asked in this lifelong trial.

The Lord showed me in my forties the explanation:
she had a high-functioning form of affliction,
a personality disorder that distressed our family.
I finally could tease out the facts from all fiction.

Women and men who suffer from such disabilities,
straining relationships, immature in their emotions,
they are the minority; let us not judge by them
the genders with damaging stereotypical notions.

Let us not punish an entire gender
because of a few of their kind who've caused us harm
but instead let God heal and give us wise strategies
so the most difficult of people we now can disarm.