STUDIO

It’s probably time to introduce myself. But you should know straight off, I’m a liar. Really. This isn’t a gimmick, to draw you into the story. Or did you already know this about me? If you’ve gotten close enough, you know it’s true. If you haven’t, I’m sorry to break the news. Do not trust me. Least of all to truthfully represent myself. Which is a funny thing for a potential memoirist to say. Or maybe we’re all like this. But I am really trying to come clean. Part of me is completely earnest, wants very much to be known and understood clearly. But then … I lie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I lie constantly. And yes pathologically–by which I mean in a compulsive way that is damaging to myself and others. I have always lied, or for as long as I can remember. At first I was always in trouble for lying–until I wasn’t. Looking back, it wasn’t that I got really good at it. People just stopped calling me out. I can see now that, as my childhood went on, my parents wanted me to lie to them. So I did. Then, my friends and classmates wanted me to lie to them, and so I did. Later still, my boyfriends wanted me to lie to them. So I lied. I knew they wouldn’t, couldn’t, accept the true me. They wouldn’t, couldn’t, provide the unconditional support and respect I needed. So I lied the person they wanted into being. Lying can be a people-pleasing behavior. But of course that’s not all it is.

Reasons I lie: Placating others by disavowing my own needs. Shielding myself because I distrust others’ willingness or ability to accept me and my needs. Bluffing because I have absolutely no idea what my needs are. Pretending to embody a selfhood that isn’t actually me. Seeking attention and respect. Evading attention. Evading other people’s needs, feelings. Out of a belief I am protecting someone’s feelings. Out of embarrassment. And because of my social anxiety, often lies come out before my thoughts can catch them. These are everyone’s reasons, yes? But for me, unchecked, the lies grew so thick I couldn’t see who I was.

I was helped to understand that I was lying constantly without realizing it. I was helped by someone who both noticed and called me out on it–because they were the first person who really needed me to start telling the truth. Urgently. Because, and here I might sound dramatic but it’s true, I was going to die if I didn’t start telling the truth.

If you have suicidal thoughts, tell someone. I’m still here because I admitted it to someone. I waited to be interrogated about it, though. I waited until I was called out, confronted. Don’t wait.

My subsequent psychiatric support helped me see the reason I didn’t want to live: because my life felt like a trap created by decades of lies I’d been telling myself and others.

In order to save my life by living more truthfully, I decided to forcefully hit the life “reset button.” I left an eight-year relationship. I left California, where I’d been living an untruthful life for ten years, and returned to Michigan where it’s easier to be myself. I started writing again, approaching it as a practice of self-discovery and radical truth telling. I started awkwardly talking to my family about our disfunction and inability to communicate honestly with each other. While very difficult, those actions have been a cinch compared to the really important work: seeing my thought processes and behaviors clearly, and ceasing to lie to myself–so that I can live a life that feels like mine.

Writing helps. Therapy helps. Mindfulness and meditation help. But I’ve also had to commit to a process that constantly challenges my social conditioning, that makes me and other people uncomfortable, that humbles and embarrasses me in addition to freeing me. When it comes down to it, my lying has most often been a response to social pressure. Even the lying I do to myself is primarily a self-disciplining behavior I adopted long ago to either fit in or blend in. But what I’ve realized recently is the cost of this type of lying. I have friends, but we don’t have much in common and they don’t really know me. I kill time watching the content everyone else does, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. There is an alienation that keeps me disconnected from the world of my friends and family, because I don’t see much of myself in it. But the prospect of turning away to find where I do connect, where I can find joy and excitement and meaning, seems lonely and antisocial. But then again, that’s how I feel now: lonely and antisocial. Maybe if I take the leap, what will actually happen is I will find community.

I don’t enjoy lying. Even when I’ve benefited from it–which is often–or if it comes with a feeling of temporary relief–which is often–lying inevitably feels bad because it conflicts with my values. Lying is self-loathing, and it is cynical. I believe that humility–not self-loathing–and critical thinking–not cynicism–play important roles in our lives; both are only possible through truth telling. I allow that there may be lies that are a kindness. But most of the lies we tell–that I tell–are not a kindness. They perpetuate harm through misrepresentation, and prevent us from seeing and connecting with each other. Our time here is short, and it feels like we waste so much of it believing in and perpetuating lies instead of connecting authentically.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, it kills people. When everyone around you is holding to a lie, you feel like the defect. You feel alone. And I think very few of us are able to thrive while feeling alone. The best thing I can imagine for myself now is that I will transform my life into a reflection of who I really am, and through that process find the love and support I always needed. It is just stunning how much the gravity of our social lives pulls in the opposite direction; how much strength I need to counter society’s force. But hopefully it’s like exercise: if I strengthen my muscles and balance through resistance training, it will get easier–and feel more empowering.

Finally, I know that there are a number of people in my current community that have been where I am now, and are further along in the journey that I’m trying to take. I have been unable to connect with them because I have been burying my head in the sand for so long. And it’s easy to fall back on the belief that you can’t talk to people until you “have some things figured out.” How could you talk about what you’re going through, when it’s still so messy and incoherent? We don’t value or know how to have conversations that are both messy and positive. In the self-discovery journey, right now it feels like I’m in a phase where I am just recognizing and naming that which I am not. But this is only part of the work I need to do. I want to start claiming things too, recognizing the joy and meaning they bring me. Major depressive disorder really interferes with that process of recognition though. A lot of what I’m still doing is treating that, in order to see my outlets for joy, excitement, and meaning more clearly.