by Tori Williams

Created on: February 26, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

I recently read a play about self-deception. If you are in my English I class, you did too, although you may have been asleep and thus it might not have had the same impact on you that it did on me. It really made me think. Like a dog chasing its tail. How does a person stop self-deception? A paradox. The uncomfortable, often unpleasant honesty that you would need to have with yourself in order to realize you've been deceiving yourself is always unattainable. You can't hold it until you realize it, and you can't realize it until you have it in your hands.

We are taught to be honest and conditioned to lie. Lies from the mouth of another are easy. They stay on the outside and eventually fall apart, sometimes after much too long, but they eventually do. It's easy to judge that person. Someone else.

The lies we tell ourselves are different. They are abstract. They get inside and become wound into the concrete fabric of who we are. Simple enough to rip out that one misplaced thread, but not without destroying the pattern of all the truths.

We're always looking for who we really are. Looking for that truth. We look for it in our parents who lied to us about Santa. We look for it in lifelong friends that we look at and don't recognize anymore. We look for it in a lover who is so busy trying to untangle his own that he can't share. We look for it in a career, in our children, with our relationships, with our possessions, with our successes and our failures. It's no damn wonder, being humans and thus flawed, that we start to get these things tangled until they're unrecognizable. We confuse our relationships with possessions, and our failures with successes. Sometimes we even get the lies of others confused with our own truths. I am ready to rip out a few of the misplaced threads. I might destroy something in the process, but it can always be replaced.

Truth 1: I am not tired. I don't need to go to bed early and rest up. What I really want to do is escape. I want to escape the way I've been disappointed by others and especially by myself.

Truth 2: I haven't just had a "run of bad luck." I have made bad choices. There were always warning signs, there was always an opportunity to slam on the brakes and go no further. I had those chances and chose not to take them. Others have let me down because I have allowed it.

Truth 3: Time does not heal all wounds. Some are just deep enough that they will never heal. You just have to get used to them and accommodate. Don't put too much weight on that particular spot. And for God's sake, quit trying to treat a dog bite with Pepto Bismol!

Truth 4: Not everyone experiences life in the same way. My own experiences and life lessons are not intended for others, just as theirs are not for me. I can't take someone else's abstract truths, and I can't force mine on someone else.

Finally, Truth 5: I do NOT have it all figured out. I probably never will. Things aren't simple and not all people are generally decent. Some people are just ugly. Sometimes it's easy to see, and sometimes it's not. It is not my job to look past the ugly and find beautiful. My job is to know ME. To be honest with myself. To rip out the ugly and then to repair the beautiful. To repair it so well that to everyone else it will look like it has been in tact all along.

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