Lying...

I have been a horrible liar (horrible in the sense I did it, I was actually pretty good at selling the lie which really was not a good thing). And for the most part, I lied to protect you, or me.  The truth was always something that was mutable and changing...and I found out early on in my life that truth is something that is best known only to me.  Lying was the way I felt like I kept myself safe.  And I suppose that worked to a degree.  However, a lifetime of creating distance and space by not telling the truth, made the distance in my relationships difficult and ever expanding.

Mostly, I lied because I didn’t know how to tell you what I really felt.  No, I didn’t like what you just said. No, I didn’t want to do what you just suggested.  No, I didn’t and don’t want you to do that.  But I felt, that if I spoke my truth, I would lose you or hurt you and somehow that was way more important than me being authentic and honest.

I lied to create space between me and you. And I did this until there was so much space that I didn’t feel connected to you at all.  Drinking helped a lot because it was a ready distance creator and then also lying was a great cover for all the shady shit I was doing...

But you know the thing about habits, they are hard to break...

Today, I am the most honest I have ever been but I still default to lying when I don’t want you to know, I don’t want to let you down, or I just need some space between what you want from me and what I have to give you in that moment.  I am working on rewriting this.  Working on becoming the person who can just say:

“That isn’t something I feel comfortable sharing with you right now...”

“That is just not your business...”

“I know you may not be happy about this but I ______ and I know you would have preferred I ______”

“I know you need _____ from me, but I do not have _____ to give you...”

“Your requests and demands of me are scaring the shit out of me and I need some space...”

“There is so much of you, I feel there is not enough for me...”

“I do not know what it is you want from me, but I am almost positive that I do not have it to give you...”

“You aren’t going to be happy with me about _____, but that is the truth...”

It has taken my life, first to see that lying, while accomplishing the task of creating space and distance, wasn’t a very satisfactory platform for relationships to grow and deepen.  Then it has taken a great deal of work to find the willingness to actually let you in enough to tell you the truth, or some semblance of it.  And then, even more work to actually want you to be close to me and offer up the truth unbidden.  It has been a lot.

I mean, I guess, I lie because I am a liar.  But there is so much more going on than just attempting to avoid consequences...lying provided safety or, at the very least, a feeling of safety for me from a young age, to tell the truth was horrible and to lie was the only way to move forward without fucking the whole living thing up.

Honestly I think I started this blog, in a large part, because I needed a safe platform to speak truth without immediate conversation and consequence.  Of course, the truth I have spit here has created a great deal of wreckage in my life, but today, I think I am ok with that which has been decimated by the truths I have uttered here.  Sometimes truth breaks things that need to be broken.  And often, lies cover things that are totally broken, festering and making us ill.  I know I got the formula for living quite wrong, a lot.

I am so much better at truth telling today but I still have a hard time with all of the statements I listed above because they take so much more effort and time. Lying is such a short cut to avoiding intimacy and accountability.  And I have found, that many of us practically beg to be lied to...because the truth is often painful and hard to tell and perhaps even harder to live with...

In the here and now, I am really working on truth telling to stop protecting you from that which I don’t want you to know.  I am really trying to do better, on the whole, in not shielding you from the reality that is unfolding.  If I am strong enough to say it, then you must be strong enough to hear it. Not always the case, but at least whatever happens next is based on how I really feel, what I really think and not some fucked up manipulation to keep you in the dark about it all.

Lying is just manipulation.  Withholding the truth so that you can manipulate the facts, the circumstances and the trajectory of relationships.  I see that now, oh so clearly.  It is hard to change the way you relate to others, and for me, that means telling you what I think, what I feel, what I did and what I am doing...while also being clear enough about how far I want to let you in. I don’t have to lie in order to create that space anymore, I can just nicely explain that whatever it is you want from me, or are asking of me, are not things I can provide or want to share...

I guess the best way to undercut a natural tendency and habit of lying is getting really good at knowing where you stop and someone else starts...and then being able to create a boundary for yourself that the other person can respect, or not, love, or not, hate or not, but that regardless of their response, you have provided yourself with the space and intimacy that you need to move through this wild ride we call life.

I wish I could say that I don’t lie anymore...but while that is the most true it has ever been, I still have some work to do in this regard...perhaps there will always be things in my life I am ashamed of, behave in ways that make me want to lie in order to avoid feeling badly and being held accountable.  Like most other inventory I do, I come up with amazing progress, while also seeing some glaring defects that seem so deeply rooted that I remain unsure and unconvinced I am ever going to be able to eradicate them entirely and completely...

But I keep trying...

Again, still...