![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"I got lost. I got lost, and they did terrible things to me, but, but it was just a storybook. It was just a story with monsters, not real. Not in the world but ... but if you're here and you see me then ...then it's real. And it did happen. If you see what they made of me... I - I didn't mean to get so lost."
I did mean to lie though.
I mean every single bit of that lie, and it doesn't matter that I lost control of everything that came after.
Because a lie is still a lie, no matter what. Mine was one of omission, but that doesn't make it go away. And I don't really think it makes it ok either. I thought I could pretend. I thought that if I just pretended it all away, then the fairy tale in my head would come true and I could go back to being the girl I used to be. Which doesn't make the least bit of sense, because how do you go back to being someone that you can't completely remember?
There wasn't anything to ground my memories when I got back. There weren't any clothes, or shoeboxes filled with movie stubs and pressed flowers and graduation notices. And there wasn't that picture either. Because there's always that picture. Sometimes you get the frame first, and have to sort through life to find something to fill it. But then there's that one, that flash of your life that reflects up, and so true at you, that it gets propped up, or framed, or pasted to your dresser's mirror. I didn't have that picture to look at, maybe it was for the best. Because I know I wouldn't have recognized myself.
I was determined to lie to myself, and to everyone else, about what happened during those five years.
It was hard enough with them. I was already the girl building her new cave, hiding under tables and forgetting that you didn't have to get your food on your fingers anymore. Not to mention, all the walls to write on. But I didn't write the truth there, it was just more of the happier lies that filled my head. Sometimes, yes, there were dashes of failure thrown in, but never all of it. I just...
I couldn't do it. Because what happened if they ever figured out how to read? Not the walls, really. But me. To read me well enough to flip the pages back and see what they made of me? And that all I really remembered, was how to hide?
It's why I couldn't see my folks, why I tried so hard to keep that from happening. Even though I sent that letter, I'd really counted on never seeing them again. It wasn't punishment, not really. It wasn't that I wanted to keep them from me, or me from them. It's that there wasn't a me to give. So I lied again, just a few words. I'm alive. Don't worry. Don't look for me.
They'd know what the others didn't, the minute they looked at me. How everything changed, and how I didn't know the girl anymore, the girl in the picture I couldn't even see, but didn't have the courage to look for. They'd look for their daughter, and only find a shell, the what was, and the what got lost along the way. And then they'd tell me it didn't matter.
But that was another lie.
It's exactly what happened, so I know this part. It isn't that it didn't matter, it's that for them, they wouldn't let it matter. But for me, it did. For me, it still does.
Most people have pretty firm opinions about lies, and that's to be expected. I know I do. But it isn't the only part that matters. What about the whys behind them? Why do we think it's ok to lie in the first place? Why do we want to? Why do we let whatever happens first, that shift or that hurt or that loss, stay with us long enough to ease the lie into being. Why do we throw the little ones away and carry the big one forever?
It isn't just the lie, it's the life that made it.
( Read more... )
I did mean to lie though.
I mean every single bit of that lie, and it doesn't matter that I lost control of everything that came after.
Because a lie is still a lie, no matter what. Mine was one of omission, but that doesn't make it go away. And I don't really think it makes it ok either. I thought I could pretend. I thought that if I just pretended it all away, then the fairy tale in my head would come true and I could go back to being the girl I used to be. Which doesn't make the least bit of sense, because how do you go back to being someone that you can't completely remember?
There wasn't anything to ground my memories when I got back. There weren't any clothes, or shoeboxes filled with movie stubs and pressed flowers and graduation notices. And there wasn't that picture either. Because there's always that picture. Sometimes you get the frame first, and have to sort through life to find something to fill it. But then there's that one, that flash of your life that reflects up, and so true at you, that it gets propped up, or framed, or pasted to your dresser's mirror. I didn't have that picture to look at, maybe it was for the best. Because I know I wouldn't have recognized myself.
I was determined to lie to myself, and to everyone else, about what happened during those five years.
It was hard enough with them. I was already the girl building her new cave, hiding under tables and forgetting that you didn't have to get your food on your fingers anymore. Not to mention, all the walls to write on. But I didn't write the truth there, it was just more of the happier lies that filled my head. Sometimes, yes, there were dashes of failure thrown in, but never all of it. I just...
I couldn't do it. Because what happened if they ever figured out how to read? Not the walls, really. But me. To read me well enough to flip the pages back and see what they made of me? And that all I really remembered, was how to hide?
It's why I couldn't see my folks, why I tried so hard to keep that from happening. Even though I sent that letter, I'd really counted on never seeing them again. It wasn't punishment, not really. It wasn't that I wanted to keep them from me, or me from them. It's that there wasn't a me to give. So I lied again, just a few words. I'm alive. Don't worry. Don't look for me.
They'd know what the others didn't, the minute they looked at me. How everything changed, and how I didn't know the girl anymore, the girl in the picture I couldn't even see, but didn't have the courage to look for. They'd look for their daughter, and only find a shell, the what was, and the what got lost along the way. And then they'd tell me it didn't matter.
But that was another lie.
It's exactly what happened, so I know this part. It isn't that it didn't matter, it's that for them, they wouldn't let it matter. But for me, it did. For me, it still does.
Most people have pretty firm opinions about lies, and that's to be expected. I know I do. But it isn't the only part that matters. What about the whys behind them? Why do we think it's ok to lie in the first place? Why do we want to? Why do we let whatever happens first, that shift or that hurt or that loss, stay with us long enough to ease the lie into being. Why do we throw the little ones away and carry the big one forever?
It isn't just the lie, it's the life that made it.
( Read more... )
