I am sad to write that lying is second nature to me. Lying about myself...my state of being; lying to myself and struggling so to stop it.
There was so much lying and deceit and covering up done in my family's home...and for me it was a matter of survival. Telling the truth didn't seem to do any good or make any difference. More often than not, I couldn't speak. Froze into panic. Couldn't think. Blank as a black hole.
I had to suppress every clue to the truth about my home life. I had to feel, think, remember nothing to get through a day at school without anyone noticing me.
This self-negation nearly killed me when I was nine.
We had a pedal-car in our huge basement. One day I got into the car and badly scraped the top of my right ankle on a rusty fragment. A huge triangle of flesh had been opened and the wound was bleeding like mad. Somehow I got upstairs to my bathroom without being detected; I ran a hot bath and sat in it for ages, thinking that rinsing the foot would get all the gunk out. Then I wrapped my foot in bandages.
I got through one day at school. My ankle was swelling, hot, taut and rigid. I limped into that evening but still evaded notice.
The next day...I was rushed home from the school infirmary after collapsing. I couldn't walk. High fever. Was carried into my house, into the kitchen, was sat on the counter. Screaming and crying. My mother and at least one of our domestic staff (yes, we had one...and some of those people were my life-savers; one is my spiritual mother) yanked off my sock, tore off the gory mess of gauze and Band-Aids I'd rigged around my foot, and went ballistic. I was hauled to the hospital and massively dosed with antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and painkillers.
Decades later, my mother confided to me that if I'd gone one more day, my right leg would have had to be amputated at the knee. My body was beginning to go into sepsis; I could have died from blood poisoning.
For me, illness was cause for punishment. So was injury. My mere presence in a room could set my mother off. I had to live in exile among my relatives, even as I lived within their walls.
I had to make my whole life a lie in a way...just because I was alive.
Illness was sometimes a cause for excitement and a bizarre celebratory spirit in my mother. If one of her children's illnesses worked to her advantage -- got her lots of attention, possibly some new pharmaceuticals, maybe a trip to the Caribbean to get her out of the sickhouse -- she became flamboyantly attentive to us while regaling the doctors with the horror stories. Sometimes we had to lie about our symptoms --> to pretend to be sick -- so that our mother could get her thrills. I was submitted to at least one invasive and unnecessary surgery.
I in particular somehow had to make my body lie, to show the symptoms that my mother was in such a frenzy about.
Absolutely crazy-making.
At the same time, ethically...I feel such sorrow and abhorrence for how easily we humans lie to one another. I feel like slime for the instances when I lied and really hurt others. Every choice we make, every seemingly crazy behaviour ends up ultimately making sense...and lying brings such harm, almost always. Sometimes, too, a lie can keep a person alive.
Sorry for the downer tone of this post...I'm having a really hard day :-(
Roo
