lying is always the better option

Lying is Always the Better Option

By Ivania Moreno

It started with a bracelet, one with a singular star charm and one that wasn’t mine. 

My friend lost it while our class was in P.E. She told our teacher, who had taken the matter very seriously by creating a makeshift police lineup outside our classroom door. Going down the line, she asked each of us individually if we were the culprit as if she would be able to tell who the liar was. But six-year-old kids, fresh from the outside, were fidgety. Shifting our weight and tugging against our sweaty clothes, our wavering eyes could easily be dismissed as a child trying to calm back down. 

When she reached me, my hand was in my pocket, the bracelet hot against my balled fist. My face remained relaxed, my voice steady as a “no” slipped from my lips with very simple truthfulness. 

She passed to the next kid and so on. When the line ended, and no bracelet had been handed over, we were told to pull our pockets. 

Fear struck me momentarily, but my body adjusted. I gripped the bracelet in my palm and kept my fist closed. My hand remained still and attached to the lining as I gently pulled it out. I went home with crescent moon indents on the inside of my hand.

My first lie was spoken in the first grade.

I had lied and didn’t get caught.

After that, I lied for the sheer sake of lying. It became an itch I had to scratch, a compulsion that carried no ill intent. Each time a lie formed, my skin became sensitive and irritated. The tips of my fingers begin to lift and the skin on my ankles would leave trails behind me. I did do my homework; a piece of my neck skin fragmented off. You must have lost it; I rubbed my back against a door and shook out all that had fallen off. I did like your food, I find you incredibly funny, a new skin formed beneath as the old skin became dry and left behind. 

I walked into the fourth grade one day with a cast covering my arm. The bones underneath were working overtime to heal the shattered line. I tripped over my dog as we were running around in the backyard. My classmates offered words of worry and unconditional sympathy. They inquired about my dog, and I gained their laughter from my unfortunate, clumsy mistake. I reveled in their concern, soaking up their empathy as I picked at my skin, watching it flake away like snow. I laughed and smiled along with them.

In truth, I had fallen out of a hammock. It didn’t sound as exciting; there was no room for storytelling or alterations. I was merely reading a book in a hammock and accidentally fell out. My young brain must have felt as if that incident was unworthy of any sympathy, though I’m now pretty sure I would have received the same reaction from the kids in my class if I had just told the truth. But I didn’t. The craving to fit in and be the center of attention motivated my impulses. It felt good to peel and feel the skin lift against my fingers, to control what others believed to be the truth, to be liked and relied on for a good story.

 Eventually, lying became easier and less important. This assignment isn’t that hard, that dress doesn’t look good on you, this isn’t a big deal. I would even lie to myself when the urge to pick and pull became too strong. Ultimately, these lies started to seep into my very being, and the need became less obvious, less insatiable. Now I’m 21, and I don’t know if anything I say is even true.

I think I’ve picked at myself too many times, peeled back too many layers, to the point that even attempting to tell the truth would cause me too much pain. I often question if my truth is too boring, or even non-existent. Would it be entertaining or beneficial? 

Sometimes I will stare at myself in the bathroom mirror—not in a passing glance sort of way, but a real look. I stare at my eyes, which are lifeless most days. I can notice the vacancy in them, the lack of light, or what some call the “spark”. I lie to myself and say that I have it. I stare into the mirror at my empty eyes, then force my lips to upturn and stretch into a smile. Wrinkles form around my mouth but never my eyes. I examine how much teeth to show, moving my lips oddly, like an old lady who has just put her dentures in. I wonder how people smile with just their bottom row of teeth showing, or both at once. My mouth moves, and I stare at how the smile sits on my face, how odd and fake it truly seems. The tautness makes my jaw sore. I stare at my eyebrows, moving them up and down, watching how my eyelids shift with them. 

My face looks best when my smile shows my top teeth, eyebrows positioned as high as I can make them, eyelids doing what they do. I lie to myself; I look happy. 

I’ve seen how other people wear their happiness, how that emotion rests on their faces like a breeze passing by. There is no deeper consideration, no manipulation of any sort.

I try my best to mimic them, morphing the grooves of my face into expressions I feel I wouldn’t have without other people to show me. Others will believe me when they see this genuine smile. I test it out on them; they smile back, and I add theirs to my memory. I stare into the mirror and try to wear the different faces I’ve seen, the emotions I remember. I feel like I’ve lied so often that there is no other way to wear the truth.

These emotions are real, and it’s better to believe them, so I do. 

I go out during the day, smiling on cue and laughing on time, just as  I’ve practiced before. I wring my hands together, trying to contain myself in my skin, to keep from picking and pulling. My eyes never meet anyone else’s; instead, they land on a shoulder, an ear, or the top rim of someone’s glasses. I’m afraid they’ll see right through me if I look them in the eyes. 

The second someone’s attention turns somewhere other than my face, my smile drops and my laugh cuts short. My lying becomes too heavy. My eyelids droop, and my eyebrows sag. It’s tiring, and I’m tired. When they look back, I regain my composure. In an instant, I am back to me again—the me that I have curated to fit this situation, the one that tells the truth. I nod my head, reel in my smile to just a closed mouth with upturned lips, shift my eyebrows for a shocked or sad reaction, and the conversation continues. 

It’s easier with a mask. But if the mask falls, they will all see an emptiness that hasn’t been filled in years.

My lies become blurred when I have an interaction that feels authentic. When a friend tells a joke I laugh, and I smile, and I react. That is all real, I tell myself. But then my laughter gets too loud and my smile too wide and I feel my skin stretch and every muscle shifting into a place I have not practiced before. Everything feels wrong. My expression must look strained, facing a collision, a monetary overflow of emotions all mingling into one.

My laughing stops and my smile falters. I notice, and I fix it, stretching my lips back out as I raise my eyebrows back up. By then, I’ve re-duct taped and re-contained my face back into a suitable position. I look back on times like these and only see myself trying not to drop the smile, how much work it takes to keep it on. I see my dead eyes again. But my reaction was real. I found that joke funny. I enjoy other people’s company. And I believe it because that was real. Otherwise, I would be left with the knowledge that I have nothing else to offer people.

My mother is sick. She tells us these things sporadically when there is no other option but to fill the family in. When she is at work and about to be taken to the nearest hospital by ambulance, I yell and fret, “Please, tell me when you’re not feeling good or when you’re sick.” But that’s a lie too. I don’t want to know, because knowing will make it all real, and I’d have to take this seriously.  I’d have to worry about what will happen in the end. My worry for her is too real to be fake but too fearful to unleash, so I contain it, just a bit. I tell her to drink more water and to take care of herself. I don’t add anything else because these are mere facts that can’t be turned into lies. 

She’ll lay there, in the emergency room bed, and say she knows. She’ll place a small smile on her lips and tell me, “I am glad you are so strong; I know I can rely on you.”

I tell her these things, but the next time she comes to me about a recent doctor’s appointment or how her hands and feet hurt, I lie once more. I sit and listen, nod my head, scrunch my eyebrows low, and together, my lips turn into a straight line. It becomes a habit, a meticulous routine. “It’s going to be ok, just take your pills and you’ll be ok.” I grip her hands and feel her skin and the bones that lie underneath. I run my fingers over her knuckles, and I hold myself back from crying. I relax my face and make a joke or change the subject quickly. I need to control my reactions and lie so my mom doesn’t worry. I need to do this because, if I do, then I will be helping. I’ve learned this is where I am most useful. 

If I spiral, if I break down and cry and burden her with these thoughts, then she will cry and worry and spiral. My lies are all I can offer, my lies that seize any worry. I am incapable of helping in any other way. I can’t face the problems head-on, so I’d rather do it in the seclusion of my mind. I’m afraid to voice the truth because it will make it all feel real, and if it is then it will be too much for me. No amount of tape would be able to fix these problems.

Fear is something I try to hide and avoid other people from feeling. I couldn’t possibly show her how scared I really am, or how the tears behind my eyes are gearing up to spill. What kind of comfort would that offer? Two people freaking out wouldn’t help anyone, so I’d rather be emotionless, or hard-headed, than breakdown over something I can’t fix, can’t control. I change the subject because that is all I can do. I don’t want to know how deep her pain is so I lie and tell her it will get better, that doctors will help. I tell her, “Make sure you tell the doctors all your symptoms, don’t skip out on anything.” I don’t add any more because that is a fact, and it can’t turn into a lie. 

When I’m alone, I can peel off the tape and let my face rest. I don’t need to react or interject; I don’t need to reassure or appease. I just let my face fall and stay as silent as I want. I let my skin settle into itself, let my jaw hang loose.

At night, I’ll cry facing the wall. Sometimes the tears don’t come naturally. I imagine scenarios where all the terrible things that could go wrong actually do. I imagine the worst outcomes, personifying my fears into images. My thoughts bleeding into apparitions.

I don’t say anything or think to myself that things will get better, I just let them run and form freely, allowing myself to break down by their immensity. It’s unbearable to go to bed, I have no one but myself. When it becomes too much, I put myself to use and lie once more. I face away from the wall, lay on my back, and smile, even if I can’t see it, because I read somewhere that when you smile, your body releases endorphins that make you happy—I don’t care to look into the validity of that though. I’ll believe it even if I find out it’s a lie. 

Occasionally, I’ll look back to the time I stole that bracelet. Whenever I’m about to tell a really big lie, or when I begin to second-guess the importance of it all. I imagine the chain balled up in my palm, the indents still in my skin. The pain was minuscule compared to the feeling of being able to make a person believe me, that idea that I could alter some sort of perception of myself, control what they might have felt. I’ll picture my friend's face full of tears at the end of that day, how sad she looked. I remember how much of an ass I was in trying to ease her pain. It was much easier to jump into lies so effortlessly and unremorsefully back then. Back when I wore my smile with ease, and it hadn’t gotten lost yet. I sat next to her the whole day, patting her back, you’ll find it, it’s probably just misplaced, I don’t think anyone stole it. I went home that day miraculously unbothered. In the secrecy of my room, I had placed the bracelet on my wrist, and let it dangle. There wasn’t anything special about it other than the fact that I had lied to get it. I took it off and hid it beneath my pillow.

The second time I lied was when I told my friend I had found that bracelet by her chair. She believed me, snatching the chain from my fingers and holding it close to her chest, thanking me over and over again. She didn’t cry, which I thought she would have. Instead, a smile broke onto her face, one that reached all the way to her eyes and showed her teeth, one that only a child wears. Her eyebrows shot up as if they were going to merge with her hairline and her silver tooth seemed to have reflected the overhead LED light and right into my eyes. 

She must have known that I had stolen it. And yet she still wore her smile, and still let me lie to her as I orchestrated a story of my chivalry and sharp eyes. She sat next to me in recess listening to my play-by-play. I was just walking by when I noticed a shine catch my eye, how I decided to bend down and just happened to see her bracelet by the desk’s metal leg. It was hard to spot, but I saw it. 

I became a hero; I gained her gratification, her joy. She clapped and we hugged, and I took it all in greedily. I mentioned how slick I was putting the bracelet into my pocket, rising back up, and looking around to see if anyone had planted it there in the first place. She played into the lie with me, allowing me to take her on this journey. There was no need to tell the truth because lying became the better option. Whether she believed me or not, I don’t know or care to remember.