aliarstruth-blog1

[aliarstruth-blog1]

ridiculous things i’ve felt compelled to lie about throughout the course of my life: part 1

-several members of the band Good Charlotte once called me on my birthday just to say hey

-that I know how to pronounce Sade’s name (I do now, thankfully)

-I can connect to my friends brains during sleepovers, allowing us to dream in tandem

-I have been snowboarding and was pretty good at it, actually -I’m great at going to funerals, not a big, exhausting emotional experience for me at all

-I am super comfortable holding babies

-my family owned most of a town in northern pennsylvania (it was just the local inn and some land, not as much a town as farmland but I always feel like I’m reaching whenever I say it and I want you, dear internet, to know it)

-I care about Dave Matthews Band

[aliarstruth-blog1]

feelings.

I lie about my feelings for you almost every day. You lie about your feelings for me. Look at us, two liars. 

Two walls, impenetrable. Two fools. Who knows where either of us are at any given time. What fun, we are! Please hit me with a truck.

I.  I press my face against you and inhale motel soap and sweat and sadness. I exhale and inhale again, this time hoping for something different, but all i get is

you. 

II.  How do I tell you that I felt someone else, held them close, breathed them in but all I could think about was that  they didn’t feel as warm or as soft or as strong or as frustrating or as home as

you?

III. “more open and humble” I’m not sure who it is you’ve met but it’s not me.  she seems nice.  I’d love to meet her sometime.

you must know I can’t be something or someone or somewhere I’m not.  I won’t be.

and I really don’t want to write about you anymore. (another lie.)

[aliarstruth-blog1]

I.

I am a liar.

I have been for a very long time.

When I was a kid, I lied all the time. Not in a bad, seedy way, but in a way I thought made me seem “cooler” or “more interesting” or “desirable enough to sit with so I didn’t always have to eat the school lunches alone”. In this time, I accidentally went to Mexico once and it was great (I didn’t know what borders were or that the furthest south I’d ever been was Dallas), everyone in my family was an artist (one of my aunts was a contractor for Disney and was an on-staff illustrator for her megachurch), plus, I totally knew who all the cool bands were and definitely didn’t find out about them after hearing the Weird Al parody first. You know, lies.

It started out as a way for me to try and make friends, but it turned into me trying to be someone, anyone, other than myself, having experiences I hadn’t had, couldn’t have, being where and who I was. I didn’t like myself. I wanted to be bigger, better, faster, stronger, richer, smarter, cooler. It grew and changed and morphed and mutated into an ugly outlet for my anxiety, an easy way to set a useless, unnecessary trap for myself at a later date, when someone happened to remember ‘wait, didn’t Christina Aguilera babysit a friend of yours when you were kids?’ (She did not.) I believed I deserved it, I suppose.

It became a part of me, an uncontrollable urge to make up these little stories for anyone and everyone who would believe me, and I was very good at it. So good, that I eventually got bored with the low stakes and started to challenge myself to lie bigger. Tell them you had a college boyfriend once so you’re comfortable with more than you are. Tell them you smoke weed all the time with your cousin and this definitely isn’t your first time. Tell them it’s cool, you have your driver’s license. Tell them, tell them.

So I told them. And, ever the method actor, I paid for it. I paid for it in a basement on an old sectional with a boy with rough hands while “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger played. I paid for it, coughing in a back room of a musty beach house, half drunk on a mixture of Jameson, AMP energy drink, and Crystal Light. I paid for it in a Chrysler Sebring on a pitch black highway that I’m truly, truly lucky I didn’t die on. I’m still paying for it.

I’ve lied my whole life, almost every day, in some small way. But I’m ready to quit, and this is where I start. 

I am a liar.

I have been for a very long time.

I want to stop.

Let’s go.

[aliarstruth-blog1]

2019.

Starting this almost two months late, but what are you, a cop?

I have never been one for resolutions, but I do try to be as realistic as possible and this year it’s time I have to face it: I am a liar. I have been for almost my entire life and I have to say it has served me....well, it’s served me. 

The goal: to write as many personal essays, poems, crossword puzzles, songs, etc. etc. as I can this year in order be more honest. To take a hard look at my history of lying, its causes and consequences, the weird fibs and strange side steps of the truth. And hopefully figure out how to hold myself accountable. And stop doing it. Mostly the second part.