Lies

I seldom find it easier to be honest than to lie. I'm currently sitting on a train headed to Virginia for the weekend. I'll be spending time with a friend who I haven't seen in years, but it's one of those friendships that is so strong it doesn’t matter how rare we talk, the connection is always there. I booked the train ticket last week after I quit my job. It was fully an impulse decision after feeling overwhelmed. There's no future job in the lineup. I just wanted to get out of where I was, and I figured leaving my problems would be better than facing them.


The last time I went to Virginia, I watched my friend's parents experiment with fighting. They dabbled with passive aggression, active aggression, taking their anger out on me (their kind, appreciative guest), verbal abuse to each other, verbal abuse to my friend, and physical assault. Similar to running away, these kinds of fights did not fix their problems or even explore what they were at all. It just made things worse. Farley, their yellow lab, was so scared he would hide behind the television. One morning my friend and I tried to take Farley for a walk, but he just looked at us as if to say, "there's no point." Although we spent most our days in Virginia with my friend's parents, I still had a good time. They cooked tomato soup one night, and that's been my favorite food ever since. The previous champion of that title was cream cheese on rye bread. I admit despite enjoying that one evening thoroughly and being pleased with the taste of the soup, the night ended with another brawl between the parents. There was leftover soup (which I was excited about because they said I could take some home in a Tupperware container), but after the mom said, "the way you exhale air out of your lungs makes me want to slit my own throat," the dad grabbed the leftover tomato soup and threw it across the room. Farley came out from behind the television to lick some soup, and I never saw him come out again.


It's been six years since that trip, and now they're divorced.


My friend still lives with his mom in that same home and their names are Jon and Lily Donaldson.


                                                                                                        … 


Everything after the first sentence was a complete lie. That's how easy it is. It didn't take long to write that. Two minutes, maybe. Just hunting and pecking on my Lonovo laptop. Half thinking about the words I'm writing, half thinking about my past relationships. In reality, I am sitting in my apartment, alone, writing. My roommate, Josh, has a pet beta fish that I can't stand. So when I say alone, I mean I'm with the fish. I had many pet fish back home in Texas when I was a kid. I had two of each kind, and would name them #1 and #2 (for example: the two beta fish were Zapdos 1 and Zapdos 2, and the two shrimp-like things I called Bartholomew 1 and Bartholomew 2). I really liked my fish. One day my brother and I took their tank outside to clean it, but my brother tripped, and it shattered on the flat rocks in our backyard, killing Zapdos 1, Zapdos 2, and all the others. I was angry, but I didn't show it. It was an accident. I told that story in therapy recently, and my therapist told me it was a traumatic experience. She also told me my past breakup was a traumatic event in my life. I thought trauma meant sexual abuse or watching your father get shot, but I suppose there are many different kinds of trauma.


                                                                                                         …


For the rest of this "story" I will be completely honest. Most of what I wrote, after admitting to lying, was also a lie. Lies are so easy you can mix them into the truth, often going unnoticed. When I lie, my amygdala (the part of brain that regulates emotions) becomes desensitized from dishonesty, making it easier to be content telling more lies. If you want to become a pathological liar just keep on telling lies, and trust me, you'll get there.

The stress induced from lies can often help lead to depression, and unfortunately I am well aware of that now. So if you're a right brained thinker or have a thick corpus callosum, then you'd be better off painting a canvas or using your divergent thinking to explore real matters, rather than using that quick information processing to decide what lie to tell.


I hope the day comes where I never lie and never consider it an option because there is no benefit to it.


And thank you Felicia for helping me realize this was a problem. Maybe I'll learn to make hummus one day.