jan10

Probably one of the worst overall things that happened was the lying. Being raised to fake my true thoughts and feelings, to smile and pretend to feel happy when I didn't, to say things I didn't mean to avoid upsetting or offending others, to do things I didn't want to do while acting like I did, to learn that it was better to act than be honest.

Once you lose touch with the truth, it can be very hard to get back into alignment with it. Not only within yourself but also externally. It's confusing and disturbing, and ends up hurting everyone else in the process. The lies, and the eventual revelation of the truths, can be incredibly painful for everyone involved.

Sometimes I don't even know what's true and what's not within my own mind. Sometimes when words come out it just doesn't feel right. Often it's really a lie that got filed away at some point as a truth, and it needs to be investigated, discarded and replaced. I always need to be on guard with my own memories and experiences, because I was lied to and taught to override the truth with fictions. In a way I still can't fully trust myself. And others can't either.

I wish it had never started. If I could go back I would tell myself not to lie, no matter who it upset, and not to believe others if I could sense they were lying. I could always tell, I was just taught to distrust my senses and intuition.

There's little in this world more valuable than integrity and trust. I see that now. I wish I could go back and support myself as a child, and defend myself so I wouldn't have believed lies and felt the need to lie. If I'd had just one person to look out for me who really wanted to hear and speak the truth and wasn't afraid or upset by it, it could've made all the difference. There was nothing that really needed to be lied about anyways. I was just an innocent kid. I should have been free to express my true thoughts and feelings while figuring things out. But it didn't feel safe, so I lied. I told them what they wanted to hear to avoid upsetting them. And I went along with their lies.

But I can't go back, and now I have to deal with the consequences and get back into alignment with the truth. I have to walk through my own dishonesty, confusion, denial and fear while exposing the same wounds and patterns in others. The mutual lies. The comforting and convenient untruths.

I read a quote from Socrates once that comes to mind. Let me see if I can find it.

"Do not grieve over someone who changes all of the sudden. It might be that he has given up acting and returned to his true self."

That's it. Giving up the act and returning to the true self. I and everyone else has to grieve someone who was never fully real in the first place, but who appeared and became solid in a sense. A living fiction. And it all started with those little lies in childhood. With the encouragements to be false instead of real. To smile for the camera.

And it started to crumble at that first blessed insight into the truth underlying all the fictions. It's strange to look back and see how dense the shell of lies can become overtime. Until one day, if you're lucky, it becomes so unbearably confining that it cracks and the light of truth surrounding it pours in, making it all transluscent. Even if only for a moment, it's enough to start the process of the return. Because once a lie is seen through, it can never really be believed again. And lies depend on others to support them, so once one is gone they all start to fall like a house of cards.

And little by little you come back to yourself, and can start growing a home whose foundation is rooted in truth. One that can't and won't crumble, because it is essentially you.