Living a Lie

By 不安定なクッキー

I used to cry a lot; every time I needed to talk or interact with other people, it felt as if my threshold for tension was almost non-existent.

I would tell myself, “This time, this time I will hold it together," that I would not cry if someone talked to me. But it was uncontrollable. It was as if my mental state depended on not filling up a cup, but the cup was the size of a bottle cap.

Eventually, I was able to not show it and hold my tears until I was alone again. Other symptoms, like my trembling hands and my upset stomach, were other things, but I finally felt like I could live like this.

That’s when I understood:

I can force myself to be something I’m not.

But it was hell.

Like being stabbed in the back, but smiling and knowing you need to keep that up for hours on end.

Weirdly enough, it did work, and it got easier. Even if I was by no means socially adept, I still had an upset stomach for weeks in new places. I was a working human being.

I had changed. The lie became a part of me.

Now I see that it was a more sadistic version of the saying “fake it till you make it," but with your own feelings and emotions.

Over time, I faked many things, and good or bad, they became a part of me. As if building myself from blocks, but they were definitive, because I hated who I was. I wanted to be someone else.

It worked time and time again. The only drawback being the pain of reconstructing yourself and the line that was now drawn between what I felt and what I did.

When I grew up, I noticed there was a missing piece in the persona I was imposing on this body. My desired self should know what intimacy is like.

I started meeting people and going on dates, until eventually I found someone who was interested in me. Even if it was a sad, painful experience (as all other lies at the beginning), I got what I was looking for.

I felt like I had just betrayed myself, ruined what little was left of my concept of self, and broken a part of me, but that was all expected in some way. What I failed to see was that I had used someone to hurt myself.

That’s my one unjustifiable mistake, and I started to pity her. I now see that you cannot have a relationship with someone you pity. I didn’t understand that I needed to change that feeling; you see, pity was the only feeling left from my old self.

I tried to fake loving them, and it became the truth, but there were two types of lies: those who, over time, became second nature, and those who continued to chisel away at me for years. Fake love was one of them. Even then, I had internalized, as with all other lies, that it was going to keep being a part of me forever.

Eventually they made a mistake, and we broke up.

I was immensely sad. I had spent years changing myself to love someone until it was true, and now that person is gone. But a part of me was happy; it said, “Isn’t this what you wanted? Things ended, and the last blow wasn’t by your hand, so you don’t have to feel pity anymore.”.

I felt free. Never before had I gone back from a lie; they were facts. Even if I regressed from them in some way, they were still part of me. 

Knowing that my lies were not set in stone, I started to peel the layers of my constructed self and was (mostly) able to discard all the ones that weighted me down. Becoming a different person than what my old me would have wanted, but a truer, happier one, where I live a lie.

To this day, I continue to lie, to myself and to everyone who sees me, but they are truer lies, even if the “real” me is nowhere to be seen.

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Thank you for reading! 

Please leave a comment and tell me if you find any mistakes. English is not my first language.

Inspired by “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness”