“Once upon a time, there was a piece of wood.”*

Is a lie the truth if we believe it?

Some of us live in a world of our own making. It is how we perceive our life, even if in reality it is not. It is a life that is in our thoughts: the one we should be living. It is a life we live out-loud because our reality has been disappointing.

Our truth cannot possibly be real because then we would have to face our failures. And that, quite simply, is unacceptable. We prefer to live in the dark recesses because it is in there that our life makes sense. Some of us have lived in those recesses for so long that we begin to believe that who we are in the dark is who we are in the light. So why not say the words? The words make it so. The words make it real. Don’t they?

When we live a lie, we come to believe the lie. It comforts us, and smoothes out the edges. We are not doing anything to you. We are merely making our own life acceptable to ourselves thus removing blame for any wrongdoing, any misgivings.

We are the ones who keep our distance. Being too close would make us transparent. And we can’t have that because then we would have to admit that our truths are not truths at all, but just fabrications of whom we see ourselves to be. Too close means we would have to come out into the light.

We don’t feel loved so we must not be loved. We don’t feel in control so we acquiesce to the only constant that has controlled us: our darkness. We are the ones who need love the most. We do not lie. You must be mistaken.



/First person is generic throughout.
*The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
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