Clever Escape

I can’t sleep. Again, too many thoughts in my head. Sometimes I wish they would get out already.

That and the ceiling in our bathroom is leaking water and it is a really loud dripping noise and there isn’t anything I can do about it.

On to my thoughts:

Have I mentioned I hate liars?

Hate them.

Of all the negative qualities a person could have, I detest lying the most.

And more than anything? People that profess to be your friend, and then lie to you.

Friends don’t lie to each other!

Do they?

When I was a teenager I had a lot of time to think. Well, I had a lot of time until I was 16 and my dad moved out. Then I mostly partied. But until then…I was thinking.

One popular stream of thought was the difference between telling the truth and being honest.

Did you know there is a difference? There is. A huge difference.

Telling the truth is what you do when a lie doesn’t actually come out of your mouth. Everything you say is a perfectly factual statement.

Being honest is more than that. Being honest is telling the whole reality - not hiding anything, or holding anything back. Being honest is not denying what is really going on and being totally open about it. Not being honest is…lying.

Right when I came to this conclusion, I decided that I would be honest, from that day forth. I would strive to always be honest, not just tell the truth. It was hard at first, but got easier with time.

Way easier. Almost too easy.

I try my damndest to always be honest. Always. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes not. Sometimes it causes bigger issues. Sometimes it fixes or prevents things from becoming issues. Every time is worth it.

I always say it exactly how it is. I do not lie to manipulate a situation. I do not lie to achieve a goal. I do not lie to make myself feel good about something. I do not even lie to spare someone’s feelings. I am honest, as much as I can be.

Honesty has given me a lot. A lot less pain in wondering whether a rumor is true. I just go ask the source. A lot less wondering about what someone really meant. I ask them. A lot less concern about whether I should tell someone something or not. I never wonder. I just tell them.

What more do people deserve, than honesty? In what other way can I show respect for them, as a person, then by being completely truthful? How else do you earn trust?

Sure, I slip sometimes. Everyone slips up. But then I correct myself. I admit it when I am wrong. I apologize. I take the blame and I move on. I do not try to deny anything. Ever.

There are those who think that I am too honest, at times. It makes people uncomfortable.

I figure, if it makes you uncomfortable, you must not be a very honest person, and maybe I shouldn’t be around you anymore.

I try not to look down on those people, but it is hard to respect someone who does not see the value in honesty. The ease in not talking in circles, in just saying how it is instead of making people guess.

People that talk in circles to avoid direct honesty confuse me. Why not just say it how it is? Why make people wonder what is really going on, what you really think, what really happened? Why delay the truth? Do they like the anticipation of the truth being discovered? Don’t they see that by delaying it, they only make it worse? Because by talking in circles, around the truth, you let the person know that you know what the truth is, but you aren’t telling them what it is. What kind of a person does that? What kind of a friend does that?

These people irritate me to no end.

Then there are people, who instead of talking in circles and gradually coming to some semblance of the truth, ignore the entire situation.

They believe everything that they hear, everything that they glean from fractions of the truth, every rumor, every opinion expressed to them. They believe the liars, and they take it all at face value.

Then they run away from the truth. It is too hard to face. It is too hard to go to whomever it is and say what they really feel about something, and find out what they really feel about it.

Those people are too weak to handle being honest. Instead of facing the issue, they run away from it. I pity these people. I pity their weakness. I pity their inability to stand for something, to work for something, to risk something, anything. These people can never have a meaningful relationship with anybody. A true friendship.

These people have to be the loneliest people on earth.

And they have my pity.

But they will never have my heart.

My true friends have my heart. All of it. I love them. There are very few, but they are everything to me. Sometimes I wonder if they even know or understand this, and what it means. What it means I would do for them.

Pathological and compulsive liars will never have anything of me. People that lie for no reason at all. People that lie for fun. People that insist on a lie, despite being faced with the truth time and time again. I cannot stand people like that. I cannot stand people that make me question my own memory, my own truth, things that I have witnessed, with their insistence of a different version of what my truth is.

I cannot stand these people. The thought of people that are like that make me sick.

So when I begin to question the words of a friend, a friend that has/had my whole heart, it is terribly hard. I hate that I have to question everything that person says. I hate that I have to think back to everything that person has said and done, and question whether it was all real. Whether that person was being as honest with me, as I always am with them. Whether they deserved the trust I bestowed on them.

I put final determinations off.

I look for more evidence.

And then more.

And more.

I beg to be proven wrong. I want to be wrong. I don’t want my friend, someone I loved with all my heart, to be a liar. To have not been honest with me.

Because that would make my heart the keeper of one less friend.

And give me one more reason not to trust people.

And I hate that most of all.

Sunshine called yesterday while my husband was sleeping so I talked to her for a while. She is sounding really excited about the summer, especially about soccer camp. I suppose I’d better jump on getting her registered! That and swimming, and possibly gymnastics. Should keep her (and me) busy for most of the time she is here.

My husband called her back after he woke up. Her mother hadn’t called him back (surprise) about flights so he asked to talked to her. Apparently she was sitting in front of her mother because she was not a bitch at all which is really weird. My husband got a little confused and actually thought she had been nice, but no, she was just not being a bitch.

He asked her why she hadn’t called him back since he had left her four messages. She said her phone was off.

Right.

I don’t know if you all have noticed, but you can tell the status of the phone by the number of rings. If her phone was off, it wouldn’t ring at all, or just once, and go straight to voicemail. It did not. It rang just fine.

If it was actually turned off by the cell phone company (which happens all the time) then we would get a recorded message saying that the number wasn’t available or something along those lines. My husband used to that and would have just called her father or Sunshine’s phone (though we hate doing that) to talk to her about the flights.

Pathological liars piss me off. Why not just say that you didn’t feel like calling back? Or was in a pissy mood? Or like to annoy him because you have nothing better to do in life? I hate it when people don’t just say how it is!

Does she really think we believe her when she lies about this crap? I mean, seriously. First, it is a stupid thing to lie about. Second, there is obvious proof that she is lying. Or is that the joy in it? Insisting on a lie despite all evidence to the contrary?

It is like this site about how to identify a pathological liar, which I believe I have posted before (but since I deleted all that, I suppose I should post it again). I just found another, shorter definition of both pathological liars and compulsive liars. I’m not sure which Sunshine’s mother is…maybe both.

Pathological Liar
A pathological liar is usually defined as someone who lies incessantly to get their way and does so with little concern for others. Pathological lying is often viewed as coping mechanism developed in early childhood and it is often associated with some other type of mental health disorder. A pathological liar is often goal-oriented (i.e., lying is focused - it is done to get one’s way). Pathological liars have little regard or respect for the rights and feelings of others. A pathological liar often comes across as being manipulative, cunning and self-centered.

Compulsive Liar
A compulsive liar is defined as someone who lies out of habit. Lying is their normal and reflexive way of responding to questions. Compulsive liars bend the truth about everything, large and small. For a compulsive liar, telling the truth is very awkward and uncomfortable while lying feels right. Compulsive lying is usually thought to develop in early childhood, due to being placed in an environment where lying was necessary. For the most part, compulsive liars are not overly manipulative and cunning (see, Pathological Liar), rather they simply lie out of habit - an automatic response which is hard to break and one that takes its toll on a relationship.

I am leaning towards compulsive liar, based on these definitions. She lies for no reason. She lies about whether she got the mail. Whether she went to the store. What time she got up. That her phone was off. All silly things that there really isn’t any point to lying about. She only makes stuff up when confronted about the lie that she told, then she will insist that whatever she said was exactly what happened and never, ever admits otherwise despite inordinate amounts of evidence to the contrary.