Lying To The Point Of No Redemtion

At a young age I was pushed so hard to admit the truth that lying started to feel pointless. The truth was obvious anyway and I have never regretted saying the truth ever since. Sometimes the truth is the only thing that makes the weight in your chest a little lighter. 

I hold a deep reverence for an oath where once I swear to god, I’m bound to tell the truth. Some people probably feel the same way. When someone asks me to swear, it almost feels like they already know the answer and are just waiting for me to confirm it so I just say it.

Lying is complicated. People notice patterns. If your story doesn’t match the last thing you said, that’s when things start falling apart. I don’t really understand why people lie about small things. The kind of lies that aren’t protecting anyone or sparing anyone pain. But I guess I’m not them. Maybe for them it’s embarrassing to tell the truth or maybe it feels easier to lie. I am good at noticing when someone else is lying. Sometimes I just pretend I didn’t notice but if its something that matters, I have to understand why they felt they couldn’t just say it.

There is one kind of lying that I think is harmless and kind of fun. When you go somewhere and a stranger you know you’re not going to meet again asks for your name or your life, you can just give them a different version. You can just tell them a different name, or say that you’re married, act dumb, say self-sabotaging or weird things or claim you failed school or say that you work at a morgue or as a ghost writer or a barista or a fortune teller, any job you feel like at any moment or any life that feels interesting. It’s fun cosplaying as a different person for minutes. It’s its own kind of performance and then you leave, and they’ll never know who you actually were. Identity is not really as fixed as we think.