The question comes about once a week, "when will you write a book?" and I tell them the truth: writing the story of your life means lying or hurting and there is no in-between.

I grew up on the stories of other people's lives and I thought they were the whole of truth. But even the truth, when you get beyond the prairie dresses and cornhusk dolls, feels bleak in the face of an adult. We know that the Long Winter isn't all kettle-corn and fiddle playing.

This is what happens when you grow up, you begin to see that the good memories were tall tales spun of half-truths and scents, snippets and perspective.

And yet it's truth that I'm drawn to again and again. I want that raw truth that feels like spun gold, instead of mined gold. I want to subsist on truth that also tastes good. And this just isn't how it is sometimes.

I'm looking around our home tonight and there on surfaces, chairs and tables, are the books we're reading. Stories of people's lives. Truths that they were brave enough to bare and gold that was mined from their story. And I am jealous.

I am jealous.

Because I know I have a story.

But I am afraid to bare it. Because the truth that I remember and the truth I still see, is still so much only a part of the truth that is real.

There are three sides to every story, my dad always said when he split two of us apart before we clawed each other out with our own version of truth. But the truth is that how can you see beyond what you know to be true to you? The ways in which you've been wronged? The ways in which you have hopelessly wronged? How can you know what that third side is? The real truth? The side no one really knows on this side of glory?

The truth is that I don't know if I'll ever write a book. The story I would tell would only be one third of the truth, and not even a reputable one at that.