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I spent so long trying to think of a topic for this blog. I like to think I don’t regret anything: that even the darkest moments have my life have all served some purpose. Recent experience has caused me to rethink that particular philosophy.
All my life I’ve covered things up. In fact, I’m pretty sure no one person actually knows everything about me. I regret my crippling inability to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s just how I am. And I can’t change that easily.
I can’t remember when I first started lying. Maybe it was when I fake cried to get my sister into trouble; maybe it was even before then – my memories don’t go back that far. All I know is that while it may have been a conscious decision once upon a time, now it is an instinct. I make up things: often little things that are never going to be found out. A couple of years ago I told some people I was never going to see again about how I had this wonderful boyfriend – it served no purpose, they weren’t the kind of people who were going to judge me for never having “gone out” with anyone, but I did it anyway. I used to tell my friends about things that happened on holidays, just little stories, sometimes about guys (what adolescent girl can resist a holiday romance?) sometimes just amusing anecdotes to make my two weeks reading with the parents seem slightly more interesting.
It was never really a problem until I got older. Now I’ve been covering things up, pretending things, for so long, that it is almost impossible for me to properly open up to anyone. There are sometimes when I want to, I really, really, want to. I have “JD moments” where I imagine in my head what would happen if I just blurted out the words on the tip of my tongue. But I always feel physically sick and cannot get the sentences out. There are some things that just don’t roll off the tongue so easily as the stories I can make up.
Effectively, I have crippled myself.
And, of course, it has gotten me into trouble. I found someone I didn’t want to lie to.
I always knew that I wanted to fall in love with someone who would know everything about me – and who would love me anyway. Call me a romantic, but I bet it’s what almost everyone has thought about, if not striven for. So when I did fall in love, I really wanted to prove to myself that I could be the perfect lover. I could tell him everything and I would – wouldn’t I? Well, not exactly.
Breaking a habit of covering up who you really are is not the easiest thing in the world. Call me morally skewed but admitting the lie is far harder than telling it.
Maybe I have a fear of being rejected for who I really am. But it’s ironic, that by covering up who I really am, I only increase the danger of rejection.
So, yes, it took me a while to sift through my layers of cover-ups, but I found something.
And that’s the whole truth.
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