on little lies, white lies, the big stuff, and all that comes between.

i still remember the first lie i told.

or, well, the first lie i was conscious of telling.

it was mid-afternoon, after school, and i sat perched atop one of the high bar stools framing the kitchen counter. it spun from side to side and i sat, legs folded under, slowly moving and swaying, a yellow box of nilla wafters in front of me.

my mother had made it clear that i was only to have some (alarmingly) low number of them. no more than three, or some such.

nonsense!

(i had a really good mom. among the best).

i ate three. then three more. then probably three more after that. and on and on and on and on and on.

and i remember her coming back into the kitchen,

did you have just the three?

yup. just three.

and there it was. the first lie told.

i don't remember is if she knew. probably. but what i do remember is the stomach-churning it elicited--and how that had nothing to do with too much sugar.

i am a tremendously lousy liar. i don't do it. perhaps that's the dictate of some strict, and often too-rigid moral compass, but i just don't have a knack for it.

no talent, no skill.

every once and a while i'll give it a go, but when i do i make a face that very clearly says i am lying and you know i am, don't you?


just the other day my mother asked me if i'd taken some pill i was supposed to.

yup.                                silence.

you're lying, aren't you?

yup.

even over the phone it's clear.

i cannot tell a lie and my face hides nothing. more than the question of morality, i think i just want to live authentically.

life is so hard, you know? filled with too many struggles and failures not to embrace them. i just don't want to diminish who i am by lying about it. even if it's a small lie.

and yet. i am deeply fearful. so i omit things. often, i omit.

lying by omission, i suppose that's not much better. and i conceal by structuring the truth in such a way that it's fragmented and unclear. or purposefully misleading.

i consider myself a deeply private person.

bet you didn't think that--didn't know that. hell, here is all this stuff that i've written and revealed and it's as truthful as it can be, and yet, i consider myself a deeply private, often secretive, person.

how can that be? not sure. but that's how i feel.

i parcel out only bits and pieces,  hold the larger truth so close to the chest. i fold truth over on itself so often that the end result is something entirely muddled--language in code.

very rarely does someone stumble upon something i'm unwilling to speak about, but when they do, i smile, side-step, unfurl silence like a ribbon between us, and re-direct. a magician's game.

however, if someone were to ask me something, point blank, i would tell the truth. stripped down, i would answer honestly.

yes. or no. and all the words in between.

and because that's all i know i cannot conceive that other's might do it differently.

that a lie might pass between.



tell me, do you ever tell lies? how do you do it? no judgement here, i'm honestly just tremendously curious.