#also reading back to my elementary school diary i want to protect that little girl so much because its still me shes still inside me and she

[moon--kiss]

throwing away stuff from a past life is so weird

[lorenkilldeer-blog]

A Story of Lying

We are born lying.

Nah, it’s not a fancy one liner that opens this diary page with a cheap metaphor (well, it is), but also it’s real. Babies cry/lie to look for attention and extra care, and it also comes that some like to lie a bit more than others.

I didn’t cry as a baby. I did lie a lot growing up.

I told my first big lie in the first week of primary/elementary school, almost like it was the first thing I learnt to do there. It’s kind of embarrassing to tell, but I’ll try to do with the minimum amount of cringe.

I’m tall. I have always been the tall girl. Not the pretty one, or the athletic one. Just the tall. As a tall person, I was taught (mostly by Sailor Moon) that you should protect others. There was a girl in my classroom that was really tiny. So I wanted to be friends with her to protect her (and, this way, be a superhero).

Mother said, of course, that wasn’t necessary at all. Somehow, that in my little child’s mind, meant that it wasn’t necessary to be friends with her if there wasn’t any danger to fight off. So I invented it. I told my mother that there was a big man waiting for her after school, that would really scare her, and that I was needed.

I think I told her the same story for four or five days. My mind at that age is very blurry, so forgive myself. My mother started to grew worried and worried. Until I finally told her, at the end of the week, that I invented it all.

She grabbed me by my arm and held me strong. It hurt. Then she said with a very serious voice not to do that again.

I understood without any problem, she let me go, and I hided in my room for some hours.

That was the very first big lie and the last one for many years.

 People lie when they don’t have reason to do so, because they want that lie to be truth. As long as it is truth for others, it’s okay for you. You may seem to have it all fixed out in Instagram, while in your real life you haven’t showered for three days, you are still wearing the bottoms of your pyjamas since Sunday and the only clean place left in your home is the bathroom.

We dress like the person we want to be. Most people dress like they don’t care about life, but they do. Some people dress like happy people and you might take care of them.

It helps us to pretend to be people that we are not.

I started to lie a lot at beginning of high school. Different from the first time I lied big, I don’t remember how this started, but I’m guessing it did many years before with the little lies.

Look, this is the way things go: My life is mostly uninteresting. As uninteresting as yours, but I didn’t know that at the time. I grew up in the countryside, in this house with big garden and almost no people. I had a neighbour my age, a friend who moved from her house early. I was quite shy and I wouldn’t talk to people without making a mess of myself, so I was used to be on my own all the time.

It doesn’t mean I was alone. Or that I felt lonely. No, I had friends, but the people I truly liked and could talk to were reduced to one or two, and only in the school time.

When I was around thirteen, or fourteen, I was taking the bus with some friends and someone started talking about childhood friendships. Most of them were pretty popular; they had had a lot of friends, all the time.

I thought it was normal to have one or two you lose contact with almost immediately. When I got asked how many friends I had in elementary school, my mind went blank and I couldn’t remember well. Then I heard my best friend telling me:

-You didn’t have friends? You didn’t have a life-

It doesn’t actually matter that much to me right now, but at the moment, if I was a liar before, that made me a better one. I got self-aware of my own pettiness.

So, when I changed classrooms and my friends went to other time schedules and classes, I got to be alone in a group of people that didn’t know me that much.

The first year I made a mess. It took me half a year to be confortable between pre made groups I wasn’t part of, then I got a boyfriend I’m pretending it never existed, and started lying more and more.

It was little things. Like telling them I had won fights I have never been into, or that I got into adventures that never happened to me. At home, I used to have a lot of internet alias, and I would talk to people, telling fancy stories that never happened. It wasn’t pathological, but I do tell you, I was lying all the time.

I invented stories for my scars. I exaggerated episodes that weren’t ever that interesting. I was always telling things that never happened and repeating conversations that I never had.

I could pretend I knew about things no one knew about, and people would fall into that. People actually thought I was intelligent. I knew I wasn’t, but it made me the first person everyone would ask for information.

(Side Note: I’m honest. If I don’t know, I won’t pretend that I do. If I was wrong, I would contact you and tell you so. And it feels way better this way)

At that age people usually lie to you about their nightlife, telling you the next morning how many drinks and pot they had and how many guys/girls they kissed, even though they got drunk with half a beer, barfed in the park, had to buy emergency hangover remedy at the store, and the only one they got to kiss was an equally drunk guy/girl that mistook them by other person.

Because I never go out, I pretended I was over those things.

I almost believed it.

If I tell you how I stopped lying and why I don’t do it anymore you will tell me I’m an idiot. Life is life; this is not a movie where every lie comes back to me in some sort of karma payment, with helicopters and me trying to save the president while battling my inner morals.

Life is simple.

We had a subject called Cinema Analysis (Or something like that. I’m inventing the name, I can’t remember it exactly. See, I do tell the truth after all). We would analyse cinema, the uses of narrative and planes, and we would watch movies and talk about the structure after. I loved that subject.

While studying narrative and storyline we saw the movie Memento. If you have seen the movie, keep on reading. If you haven’t, skip the major post twist and understand nothing after.

At the end we learn that Leonard Shelby (I looked it up on the internet, I’m terrible with names), the main character, have been using his type of amnesia to trick himself into believing that his wife was killed, and that he hadn’t found the culprits yet. While in reality she uses him to kill herself, and he had already found those men, and had already killed them. He pretends to be someone else, and tricks himself to still have a reason to go on.

Yes, it’s a very simple analysis. But finding who was the real liar above them all was what made me to change. I didn’t want to believe my own lies. So I stopped lying.

The third year was the best year for me. I got lie-free and less concerned of myself. I’m lame, and I deal with it. On the downside, I haven’t seen my high school classmates again, so it is probable that they still believe I won all those fights.

 And, just for you to know, I have done martial arts since I was a child, but I’m terrible at fighting, so don’t try to fight me because I’m probably going to lose.

Have a good honest day.