I Was A Compulsive Liar
I’m sure a therapist would have a lengthy explanation on the why but for me it’s simple.
I was lonely.
I was sequestered inside my home like a doll in her dollhouse.
No, you can’t go to the movies with your friends.
No, you can’t go to a sleepover.
No, you can’t go to their house to hang out.
No, you can’t…
You get it.
Whenever I asked my mother if I could do something with my friends, she would say no.
I’m older now. I see that she’s the product of how her parents brought her up. But I was younger then. I was younger and I was mad.
All the kids at school had friends that they’d get to do things with. I had no one. I am not saying that to garner sympathy. It’s just fact.
When you say no enough times, people stop asking you.
I would scream at my mother.
I would rage.
I would plead. Please. Just this once. Let me go out. I’ll be back home before sundown. Please. Let me go to the competition. Please. Let me go to her birthday party. Please. Let me go to the mall. Please, ma.
She never did.
So I invented a world of my own in a tale as old as time. I told people at school about these fantastical friends I’d created. How much fun I’d have with them. How rich they were and how amazing their homes were and how sleek their cars were. I didn’t want to be pitied for being that weird girl with a controlling mother. I detested being pitied. I still do.
I never believed the lies myself, to tell you the absolute truth. Whenever the lies got too much, I’d tell myself, just until you have real people. When you have real people, we’ll drop the act.
Turns out, people aren’t idiots. They know that they’re being lied to.
I was ostracized by everyone at school. I went from being the ‘sheltered girl’ to ‘that fucking liar’ sooner than you can say my name. The web of lies only thickened. I lost track of the ones I’d told and began to slip up.
The other kids laughed at me and called me names. They whispered about me and gossiped about the latest in the list of lies I’d told. I became the center of attraction in the worst way possible.
I cried myself to sleep every night.
I am a classic extrovert. If I don’t (meaningfully) interact with people on the regular, I start to spiral. Having ADHD doesn’t help.
My grades began slipping. I passed my O Levels with Distinction and by A Levels, I was barely squeaking past an E.
I grew silent.
I began sleeping less.
I lost weight.
My skin and hair dulled.
I stopped dancing.
I was alone and for those of you who’ve never had the misfortune of being alone, lemme tell you this. It sucks. It sucks monkey balls. You get depressed. You start to hate the sight of yourself in the mirror. Food tastes like wet cardboard so you stop eating. Sleep evades you in an endless circle until one day you just drop from exhaustion.
You begin to try to hide yourself. Your clothes get baggier. Your sketchbooks stay closed. Your assignments sit there and your grades? What are those?
You start lashing out at the people around you if they so much as look at you. Then the regret of doing so eats you up inside.
You don’t eat at school because no one sits with you.
You cry until you learn how to cry silently.
Life becomes a chore. Every day, you regret putting on your uniform. Every day you tell yourself, don’t react when they taunt you.
Someone decided to give me a second chance though. We’re gonna call her Dulce.
Dulce was the first one I went to. I took her to a somewhat private part of the school and told her everything. I told her the why of my lies. I asked her to forgive me. I cried. I don’t cry very often but when I do, it’s all snot and bubbles and eight tear tracks instead of two.
She forgave me.
She has a huge heart.
I was never the same though. I was addicted to lying and I’d read somewhere that in order to get rid of the addiction, you had to completely stop doing it.
It was hard. So very hard.
Lying is easy. It’s the easiest thing a person can do. And once you get into the habit of lying, they begin to slip out of you with infinite ease.
You begin lying even about the insignificant things. Or at least, I did.
To lie is like to fall. Gravity does all your work for you. To tell the truth is a Sysphysian task.
But I did stop. Because I’m tenacious like that once I’ve decided on something.
Hour by hour. Day by day.
It got…more doable. I’d never say easier. It isn’t. It’s just that I developed some thick-ass resilience muscles. I took pleasure in the proverbial burn in those muscles every time I exercised them.
This wasn’t a movie though. It was real life. In real life, you don’t become the star of the show after being the villain.
I was still an outcast. But at least I had peace of mind again. I still hated being on the outside but I understood why. I dealt with it. I shrugged off my discomfort. I slowly gained back my confidence. I began eating lunch again. I still sat alone but slowly I was accepted by a few other girls. I began participating in class again.
Studying didn’t get easier. A mixture of ADHD, hormones, and lying tends to do that to a girl. But I didn’t fail anything so there is that.
Dulce was a huge part of it. It took her a long time to trust me again. Months of hard work. But she did in the end. At least I think she did.
I never had the guts to ask her.
I wasn’t that strong.
She moved after graduation and we drifted apart. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for the part she played in my life. Not a single day. We grew into our feminism together. We grew into activism together. She introduced me to the joys of creative writing. Too much passed between us. The marks she left way back when are still here.
The past still affects me of course. I hate it whenever I’m reminded of high school. I was very grateful to get out of it. That slate was too muddy for me to wash completely. Too much had happened.
I am still in the process of rehabilitation. I guess I will be for a couple more decades.
But that’s okay.
A teller of truths,
Radha
