Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-03-20 01:18 am
azurelunatic) wrote2002-03-20 01:18 am
Pathologically Honest
Ah, these LJ memes -- not quite, but the process of having someone else's idea spark an entry of your own. Thanks, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gremliness.
I learned to lie when I was 5. I remember the first lie I ever consciously told: the first grade teacher, that I did not have to go potty. I wet my pants because I was scared that the toilets might explode, you see, because I'd read Encyclopedia Brown and the Exploding Plumbing, but not carefully enough. So she asked me, did I have to go to the bathroom, and I said no. I was lying.
It hurts to tell a lie, these days. I tell my honest opinions. I am able to hold back opinions, sometimes, leave things unsaid... but for the most part I tell the truth.
There are some days where I cannot tell a lie. These are usually a slightly altered state of consciousness, often not with enough sleep. I cannot tell a lie, like that -- even not speaking hurts me, physically and psychologically hurts me. I can say, "I am not comfortable to answer that," but even that hurts.
I had one of those mornings a few months ago, sometime after Adam moved in. January? February? Not this month. Sometime back then. I could not tell a lie; I had to answer everything. So I babbled. Fast-foolish, as Miles. Adam did not take advantage of it as much as he might have; Darkside did not take advantage of me at all.
I was rather looking forward to being questioned by Darkside in a context where I had to answer. I'd often be willing to answer almost anything to him, but this -- I would have liked to have told him everything. Everything he'd wanted to know.
Odd, this desire to strip emotionally naked in public.
gremliness. I learned to lie when I was 5. I remember the first lie I ever consciously told: the first grade teacher, that I did not have to go potty. I wet my pants because I was scared that the toilets might explode, you see, because I'd read Encyclopedia Brown and the Exploding Plumbing, but not carefully enough. So she asked me, did I have to go to the bathroom, and I said no. I was lying.
It hurts to tell a lie, these days. I tell my honest opinions. I am able to hold back opinions, sometimes, leave things unsaid... but for the most part I tell the truth.
There are some days where I cannot tell a lie. These are usually a slightly altered state of consciousness, often not with enough sleep. I cannot tell a lie, like that -- even not speaking hurts me, physically and psychologically hurts me. I can say, "I am not comfortable to answer that," but even that hurts.
I had one of those mornings a few months ago, sometime after Adam moved in. January? February? Not this month. Sometime back then. I could not tell a lie; I had to answer everything. So I babbled. Fast-foolish, as Miles. Adam did not take advantage of it as much as he might have; Darkside did not take advantage of me at all.
I was rather looking forward to being questioned by Darkside in a context where I had to answer. I'd often be willing to answer almost anything to him, but this -- I would have liked to have told him everything. Everything he'd wanted to know.
Odd, this desire to strip emotionally naked in public.
no subject
you are what you wear
...Sleeping in the nude habitually would also contribute to my lack of making a big deal out of it...
Truth or dare
And the problem is that I'm very, very seldom caught in a lie, when I do lie. I'm very good at creating the entire web to go with it, out of whole cloth. I presume A (the lie), in my head, and then follow its logic chain...if A happened, then this, this, and that must also have happened; rebuild one's world around it so that in your head, it *did* happen, though you know it didn't...so that no matter how you are questioned, your insult at being mistrusted is completely honest, and you never trip yourself up. Scary, that.
I don't remember learning to lie. I don't ever remember *not* lying. I don't ever remember not being an excellent actress. The only times I got caught in lying to my parents were when I was too young to know that they wouldn't believe the story I had come up with. When I accidentally squirted ketchup all over the dining room wall, I lied and said that George had done it. George didn't mind, after all, since they couldn't exactly punish him; he's been dead almost a hundred years. It never occurred to me that they wouldn't believe me. They'd never accused me of making him up, and I'm certain my mother had seen him a time or two. *I* knew that he could move things if he really wanted to. It was hard for him, but he could do it. (He would play parlor tricks for my friends, but only if their eyes were closed; we used to pick something that we could identify, put it in one place, hold hands in a circle to prove none of us had moved things, and ask him to move it. Most of the time, he would. He was easily amused.)
But when I had my nervous breakdown, it was caused in large measure by carrying two versions of reality in my head for far too long, created mostly by my voluntary submission; in any disagreement in memory, his was "correct" and mine was wrong. I could not truly dispense with the memory my own senses had created, but yet also truly tried to believe that he was correct (yes, I know I was fucked up...that's why I refer to it as my nine years of insanity), and eventually the two versions collapsed.
I try not to do that to myself again. Plus I feel that except in certain polite or professional situations, or situations where the truth is none of the querant's business, lies are harmful, both to the teller and the person being told, and therefore disallowed by my ethics, unless to defend against greater harm.
Re: Truth or dare
...I'm glad I know how to say "Are you full of shit?" (or some politer alternative, meaning left intact) to Darkside, should our memories differ.
Perhaps it is because I do not trust my memory, good as it is, that I keep this journal. I try not to lie in the journal, because the lie would get embedded into my view of how things ran. ...If I *must* write a lie, for security reasons (privacy of those involved), I phrase it in such a way that I *will* remember the true events when I read it again, and/or I add a few lines in my own private language, speaking the truth.