Telling the Truth

For much of my life, I've been a liar. I've lied to avoid getting in trouble, like the time I was in high school and I ran my mom's car into a pole. I had a friend, older and more worldly than I, who told me if I added in a minor detail it would make my story more believable and distract my mom from the lie. It went like this: I was coming back from his house and ran into the store real quick to get cigarettes. They carded me, and so I was unable to make the purchase. (See, you've already forgotten about the fib.)

“Mom,” I said with tears of horror in my eyes, “when I came out of the store, the car was like that.”

I've lied to make myself sound more interesting. I used to tell this stupid story about how I went to a Steve Miller concert and danced the hokey pokey on the lawn at Meadow Brook. The story is true, and not all that interesting at all, but it's not mine. It's Bestie A's. Of all the exciting and grand things she'd done in her life before we were 17, THAT'S what I chose to steal. I don't even make any sense. But I did steal it and told it regularly, because lying comes as easily to me as breathing in and out.

I've lied to get away with things, like when my vice principal in high school, Mr. Collins (we had a love/hate thing) told me in my last semester that I wasn't going to graduate because I had continually weaseled out of taking a gym class. I convinced him to let me take a college course (thinking they probably offered yoga or something like that.) The only thing that was open was Karate. I signed up, I had no other choice.

After participating in the first class it became apparent that Karate was something that took a lot of discipline and hard work, things I wasn't really into at the time.

I ended up telling the Karate instructor that “they” thought I had mono but that I needed the credit or I wasn't going to graduate high school. He told me very sternly that he wanted me to come to class and observe and then write a one-page paper upon which he would base my grade. I went home, wrote the paper that night and then spent the rest of my time in his class “observing” myself writing notes to my boyfriend.

My instinct to lie runs so deep that before I started living my life honestly, my driver's license reported me two inches taller than I actually am. My personality has always been that of a woman much taller than I. No one questioned me. No one ever said, “Hey, you don't look that tall.”

Two inches may not sound like much, but when you go to renew your license and have to explain that, no, you're not 5'7”, you're actually 5'5”, you get a lot of strange looks. I couldn't even blame it on a freak accident or surgery. I had to tell the truth, that I had lied about something as fundamental as my height.

Which brings me to the other kind of lying, the kind that is certainly not as fun to reveal. This sort of lying starts at a cellular level, somewhere underneath the skin. It's the deceit of self, and I practiced it for many, many years.

I have reinvented myself tens of times. (I was going to say hundreds, but I'm trying to be honest.) Reinventing yourself has a small catch you may not know about. In order to sell it, you have to believe the lie. I eventually got to this surreal place where I looked around and realized I didn't even know what my favorite color was or what music I liked or how I wanted to dress or what kind of books I enjoyed reading. I didn't know how to be a person. I was 22 when I stopped pretending. At that time, there were maybe three things that were authentic about me. Trying to be authentic has become really important since then, epecially in my writing. If I'm not putting it all on the line, what's the point?

I went to yoga this morning. When I walked in, my yoga teacher said, “Hey, I read some of your blog last night.” She went on to say, “My God, you're unbelievably honest.”

“I have to be,” I realized. “That's where the power is.”

Telling the truth is where the REAL power is. When I tell you I am actually insecure and afraid, when I show you all the ugly that is really going on inside, that truth of my life can't get me anymore. It's now mine, and I'm using it to my advantage. When I am totally willing to be transparent, I take back the power all those lies have stolen from me.