Lies and the Lying Liar

(I almost made "liar" plural, in keeping with the reference to Al Franken's book. But I don't know that I've been lied to, so this is just about the one liar... me.)

I lie a lot. Mostly to myself, of course. I lie about my lying. And after all these years, the scaffolding that holds up my life is collapsing. My Denver friend is through with me, angered and hurt over the event of this post. And with every right-- I lied to her face about it. Of course, I didn't talk about that part of the story in the post. It didn't fit the narrative for one thing, and I had already justified it to myself. Naturally. It's what I do, it's what addicts do.

See, when I went out with that person, my friend was pretty sick. And yet, I borrowed her car to go on a date with the hopes of getting lucky. And when I got back to the house, I lied about having gotten lucky. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Mind you, it's obvious that my concern for her feelings didn't stop me from going out in the first place. Or renting a room.

What has me feeling a mix of worry, hurt, fear and anger is how she found out. Like most addicts and habitual liars, it's much easier for me to focus on how I was found out, than on my actual level of blame or responsibility in all this. Apparently someone I know, someone close to me, is still in touch with her. They read this, and they called her. I don't know who they are. She won't tell, and whoever it is hasn't seen fit to share with me the fact that they're reading this blog. She sneered at me over the phone as she pointed out that I'm quite findable via Google. This is true, but finding Dausa and finding the real-life person behind him are two different things. I've only given this URL to an extremely small number of people I know in real-life. As in, you could count them on one hand and still have enough fingers to make a rude gesture in England. But it doesn't matter-- what matters is that someone is reading, and that said someone is concerned but not enough so to talk to me directly. She says that whoever it is laughs at me and makes fun of me for these things, behind my back. And the problem with being a habitual liar, you never know for sure when you can really believe someone. Is she trying to lash out at me? Or is she 100% honest, knowing that in this case the truth is just as damaging (if not more) than any lie she could offer?

I use SiteMeter for some simple traffic-analysis. It's not terribly thorough, and there's only so much you can tell from traffic-analysis anyway. I've found the tracking record from her visit a few days ago, but I have no way of really pin-pointing a visitor prior to her, that would likely be the third-party. So I'll never know who it is that's laughing at me behind my back, unless they decide to own up and face me about it. There's some traffic from around here in the bay area, a visit from the Minneapolis area that has a strange feeling to it (because this confrontation started with a seemingly-random question about whether I'd recently heard from someone we used to know, who lived in that area last time I'd had any contact with them), and plenty of traffic that I have no idea of it's relevance (if any).

But back to the lying. This blog is, after all, all about me me me. And much as I've tried to hide it, this is who I am. I started lying extensively when I moved from Arizona to Oklahoma and started living with grandparents who were Evangelical Pentecostals. Fundamentalists, basically. Essentially everything I did was something to be ashamed of, so I learned to lie about almost all of it. And even once I left that house and lived first in dormitories then in my own apartments, I've continued to instinctively lie about anything that brought feelings of shame. And don't be fooled by the "Unrepentant" in the title-- all those years of church-learnin' have made certain that I pretty much always feel shame over anything and everything sexual that I think about, feel, or experience. I've spent gods-know-how-much over nearly 11 years on therapy, and all I have to show for it is a diagnosis of mild Asperger's Syndrome. Which explains some of the social anxiety I experience, but doesn't really cover the shame or the rampant lying. I've tried everything I could think of, even a course on meditative techniques, but nothing has stuck with me for longer than a few months. Short of beating my head against the pavement or playing hopscotch on highway 101, I don't know what else I can do that will have an actual lasting effect on my life.

I didn't want this to sound so whiny and self-loathing as it seems to have become. But it's nearly 1:45 in the afternoon and I'm still in bed. I can't make myself get up, even to eat. I don't know what I'm going to do at this point, whether I'll ever write here again or not. I don't know if I'll manage to even leave my apartment today (not true, actually... I have a regular Thursday activity that I'm somewhat obligated to attend, so I will eventually have to get up and go). All this shit has finally come home to me, and yet I have the audacity to be surprised by it. I just don't know anymore.

I know this: whoever you are that know me in real-life and aren't telling, I would appreciate it if you'd grow up and talk to me directly. If you're really that concerned for me, then you owe me that much. And if you aren't, then leave my life entirely. In the long run, we'll both be better off for it.

-D