Suicide Genius

Honesty is such a lonely word;
Everyone is so untrue.

Billy Joel, “Honesty”

Over the years since it happened, I have come to think that the event itself was the least of the problem. It was the aftermath that caused the real damage. Previously in this blog I described it as being like an avalanche–the original… whatever… that fell isn’t what’s doing all the damage, but the mass that follows it is hugely destructive.

When I was a kid I decided that I couldn’t stand liars, and I resolved not to be one. In my own meticulous way I set out to remove not just lies from my vocabulary, but all untrue statements of any kind. Well, okay, but how do you avoid untrue statements if you don’t know they’re untrue? The answer is to properly categorize and conditionalize what you say. Did I read something in an article? Fine. Don’t just state it as fact; say “I read that….” “I’ve heard….” “I believe….”

Of course other people didn’t really understand what I was trying to do, or what my motivations were. If the fine distinction came up (e.g. something I said I’d read proved to be false) I was accused of trying to weasel out of things. In the long run I kept to the course, but kept it to myself. In a way however it also caused me to withdraw from people to an extent. Why put myself out there–in the best of intent and purpose–if that intent and purpose are simply going to be ridiculed? My attempts to be the most honest and straightforward person I could possibly be lead to others in my family seeing me as a liar. (On the other hand I have a small handful of acquaintances who tend to see me as extremely honest.) The people who should know me best think they’re seeing beyond a pretense, and apparently can’t believe that there is no pretense. Combine this with the fact that when I was very young (before my “epiphany”) I was a bit melodramatic and overly emotional, and you have a situation where… the more dramatic the statement, the less I am believed.

And then I get raped by the girl I’m dating.

This of course in the midst of the mid-90s political feminist climate that was very up on the victimization of women by all those mean-old males, not to mention a highly public dog of a president who fucks everything that moves and then lies about it at any cost. And anyway… a guy can’t get raped by a girl; everyone knows that.

In the wake of what happened in college, you can understand at this point the utter impossibility of my telling my family (or anyone!) anything. I couldn’t even suggest that I was having a hard time, as it would lead to ridicule that I couldn’t possibly refute or explain. This in turn lead me to sink further into the feeling that I wasn’t trusted. That I wasn’t trustworthy. That I was a liar. I actually had to lie to pretend that the unbelievable thing didn’t happen–that I was okay. That I wasn’t so deep in despair that I could barely lift my head. I was a liar. I am a liar. My entire existence has been a long series of lies for years.

And I despise liars.

Lately a new situation within my family has arisen in which, essentially, I am considered a liar by most of them (notably, my sisters-in-law and wife seem to believe me, but none of my “core” family). And I have reached a point where I am withdrawing from them more and more, because, frankly, in the face of this I will at some point inevitably snap, and do something that can never be taken back. It’s not that I don’t want to be around them, it’s that I don’t dare. Because slapping you mom across the face as hard as you can just isn’t something you can later pretend never happened. They don’t see that what I’m doing by withdrawing is essentially self-defense. That it’s to save what’s left of my relationship with them. But there’s nothing that can be said, because after all I’m just melodramatic (which I’m not) and stubborn (which I am) and of course… lying.

And I have no defense for that last one; I am a liar. And there’s no way out of it.