Let Someone In

I've lied as long as I can remember and I've lied about all kinds of things. I would trace pictures and pretend I had drawn them free hand. I wrote my first grade "what I did this weekend" essay on a trip to a mall I had never been to. When I saw a swarm of gnats close to my friend I told her they were responsible for the mole on her chin and we'd better run away in case they gave her more. When I switched schools I said I had never taken German before even though I'd studied it for a year. I've lied about countries I've visited, I've lied about where I lived, I've lied about an imaginary walk-in closet. I'm not sure if there's anyone I've never told a lie. That's sad. I'm also not sure if there's anyone who has never told me a lie. That's worse.


I thankfully don't tell as many blatant lies anymore. Although the jury's still very much out on the question of what makes a lie blatant or subtle, and why the latter should be any better than the former - isn't it more insidious?!?! However, one lie that I can't seem to avoid, is the answer to the question "How are you doing?" and, given the frequency of that particular phrase in contemporary parlance, that adds up to a lot of lies.

I do it so often that I don't really think of it as a lie. Then again, I don't really think of any of my lies as lies really. Does anyone? The world is so complicated, our experiences so nuanced, our feelings so complicated. And yet, when people ask how you are doing, it often feels like what they want to hear is pretty simple: "Good!" "Awesome!" "Fine!" They want to be told that we are alright; that they needn't be concerned; that they are free to worry about their own lives in peace because you don't need them to worry about you. Short and sweet. They want to hear a lie. Or are they lying that they want to hear the truth?

This might be a universal phenomenon but I have never felt it with as much force as I have in the United States. The hurried rush that doesn't wait to listen for the answer to the question; the glazed look when an answer, no matter what, goes over ten seconds; the uncomfortable fidgeting when the answer is not positive... We are horrible at hiding the fact that when we ask how one another are doing, we often don't really care. I'm not sure why this should be truer for us than anyone else: Are American lives filled with more concerns (careers, entertainment, conspicuous consumption..) so that we have less left over for others? Are our American peers' problems less legitimate than those of the rest of the world? Did we just forget how to care?

And yet, while our mutual absolute disregard for one another's well-being is appalling, if I am honest with myself, I am very comfortable with the current state of affairs. I realize this in the rare moments where someone really asks me how I'm doing. There are a few repeat offenders who seem to do this regularly but it catches me off guard every single time. I feel slighted. My hubris rears its head and I can hear it roar from the back of my brain: "There is nothing wrong with me! And even if there was, why would I tell you? Why would I need you to help me?" I feel angry. I am ready to fight.

But I also feel self conscious. As if, just by their question, they have undressed me somehow and I need to urgently reach for my dressing gown, a coat, anything that will hide my nakedness. My second instinct is to hide. Flight.

And isn't that what all our lies serve to do - to allow us to run away and hide? Hide from other people, from their judgment, from the way their judgment makes us feel. Hide from the hard things in our lives, hide from our own pain, hide from ourselves.

Lies or evasion or "privacy" as we love to call it, promise to push off dealing with the hard stuff, to give us a break, to build protective walls around our psyches where all the junk can't get in. The fine print, ladies and gentlemen, is that we can't get out! Lies don't just keep us away from our issues, they keep us away from other people and eventually, even ourselves. You know what I mean. The phrase "I'm living a lie!" isn't the midlife crisis cliche that it is for no reason. Spend enough time, image managing and massaging away the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, and we begin to forget what lies beneath the surface. Until one day we wake up and the bottom of the ocean is too far to dive back down to.

That's why I so desperately need confession. Hopefully this post is a start but I know that I need so much more. I need light cast into the parts of me that layer after layer of avoidance and diversion and deceit have left in darkness for too long. Because somewhere down there, is me. Hidden. Scared. Alone.

That's the irony of the pride and fear that lead to secrecy are that they result in the exact outcome we are trying to avoid. I am running away from my pain and shame because I don't want to be judged. But I don't want to be judged because I don't want to be found unworthy. To be abandoned. To be left alone. And yet all secrets do is condemn me to the worst kind of loneliness - being alone in a crowd. The hidden life is like a white washed tomb, clean and fine on the outside but reeking with decaying matter on the inside. Desperate and dying but unaided because "everything is fine". The hidden life doesn't truly help us avoid anything that is harmful, it just guarantees we experience it alone.

In summary, neither I nor you have a choice about the stuff that sucks about us or our lives. We don't even have a choice about how that stuff will affect us. We do have a choice about whether we will endure it alone.

Reject the fight or flight response. Let someone in. Now.