My Dirty Little Secret (AKA The Lies We Tell)

Me and the truth? We have an interesting history. Early on in my adolescence, I viewed the truth as my adversary. I feared it. Feared what would happen if I told it, if it came out. Feared what people would think of me. I thought I had to fit a certain mold in order to be accepted and loved. My relationship with the truth was so dysfunctional that when I had difficulty in school (me, the former straight A student with a few Bs thrown in here and there for good measure), instead of telling the truth I ignored it and instead became best friends with its evil twin- the lie. The lie and I became pretty damn close. I lied about my grades, I forged my report cards, and I actually got pretty good at it. (Mom/Dad, if you reading this, for the umpteenth time, I’m sorry ) But the thing about the truth is that it always catches up to you and when it does, you are often in for a shit storm of pain. I was no exception.
But if the lie was my fairweather best friend, denial was the friend who stood stubbornly by my side. As a result it took me a long time to see the value and necessity of making the truth my BFF. It was quite a painful journey.
Flash forward to my adulthood when I thought I had it all figured out. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t true. It’s still not true. At some point, my life became rather complicated and the truth became both my scandalous bastard of a child as well as my savior. I felt I had to lie to protect others and the pain of doing so led me to understand that I had to live my truth in all future endeavors.
For the most part, I have. Of course, there have been a few times here and there where I have had a brief fall off the wagon with a complicated situation or two wherein at the time I –for a variety of reasons- did not speak my truth or was not brutally honest with myself. But even as drastic as some of my past lies have been, at some point in the process of healing and growth it dawned on me that they weren’t the biggest ones I ever told. For I have come to realize that the biggest, most painful, most damning lies I have ever told, are the ones I have told to myself. And at various times they have gone something like this:
You’re not good enough, smart enough, talented enough… you’re just not enough
People won’t accept if you don’t do (insert action here) or if you aren’t (insert adjective here)
You are stupid
You are fat
You are ugly
You are weak
You are a horrible mother
You are a bad person
You are a fraud
You are limited
People won’t like if they see the dark, dusty corners of your soul and find out who you really are.
You need (insert word here) to be happy
You need to do/be (insert word here) for (insert persons name here) to value and/or love you
You aren’t worthy of (insert name of person here)’s love. You aren’t worthy of love in general. You aren’t love.
I wasted so many years believing these lies.
But you want to know something? I am done. I don’t need the lies anymore. That’s not to say that I never tell these lies to myself. Let’s face it, they are a hard habit to break and I am definitely a work in progress. But I am finding that when my old fairweather friend (aka the ego) whispers these lies in my ear, while the initial cold trickle of fear may start to creep up my spine I can look my fairweather friend in the eye and see that there is now-more and more- a shadow where something I once thought of as having such substance had been. More and more I can hear the words and dismiss them for what they are. More and more my inner voice-the one that comes from my heart, my gut, my soul- shouts so loudly that it drowns out the lies. Telling me the truth-
You are more than enough
You are limitless
You are infinite
You are worthy
You are beautiful
You are love
And no one, not one person on this planet (except, perhaps, for yourself) can ever take that away from you.
It’s not just true for me. It’s true for you, for all of us. It is with such beautiful clarity that I finally understand the meaning of the phrase “The truth shall set you free”.