Pants on Fire

I used to lie all the time

By all the time

I mean I lied so much

started to believe

my lies

I have contact lenses

You just can't see them

I have 300 trophies

In my attic

I have a step-sister

Parents not divorced?

Oh maybe they're not.

But I still have a stepsister.

She lives in Minnesota.

I lied

Feared the day

I'd grow a Pinocchio nose.

Never grew one.

But I didn't outgrow the lies.

I lied to impress.

Lied to transport

myself from a reality

that I thought was unexciting.

Loved to wield stories

pumping them out

letting them catch air

my friends, their eyes wide

following the story line like bubbles floating

high, pie in the sky.

When the truth would fall

eventually, rapidly, splat,

I entertained with a new one.

I lied to my parents

Would've called,

Couldn't find a phone.

Phone lines down.

Yes, that's it.

Choked by the imaginary phone cords

I could never disentangle myself

Just told more lies.

Until my entire girlhood

scattered

puzzle pieces left with friends

they learned none of them fit together

I have no souvenirs from girlhood.

***

My sister

my Jimminy Cricket.

***

My husband

my confessor.

***

My boss

the one who wanted to make a charitable contribution to the fund of my fictitious relative whose funeral I attended when I played hookie from work.

***

My sister tried.

My husband denied.

My boss made my life so hellish I had to quit.

So I did.

I quit.

My job.

And lying.

My prayer is to stay a quitter.

And to show

my daughter

the folly

of girls who let their pants

catch a flame.

Clip

This past spring I put on a matching outfit every Wednesday and hauled my boob pump and my laptop and my grief over leaving my little one to go take the T to my internship at BevNet. And it was totally worth it. I am so glad I was able to intern at the magazine. Not only because it helped me to overcome my disaffection for the word "beverage" (I still think it's an ugly word, but it chaffs me less) but I met some wonderful people and netted myself some free bevs. Get it? BevNet! HAR! Here is one byproduct of that experience. Huzzah!

Raw

I am pretty sure the point of keeping a journal of any kind is so that you can page back through to find the person that you had forgotten you once were. The one who sort of kind of obsessed about Dylan McKay's drinking problem, who kind of thought she might have a solution to it. Who by the way got her braces tightened and they HURT REAL BAD. Who doesn't know how to spell "evadently," evidently.

Lately I have gone back because I was forgetting who I was...and I have found someone with whom I was sorry I reacquainted myself. And it's hard to read certain things I wrote, so full of self-consciousness, maybe a little venomous, and really, so "evadently," without a clear purpose. Hungry for one, but snacking on air and Cheez-Its in the meantime....

And then there have been other moments recently when I had to go back and it was more productive.

Someone wrote awful things about me on the internet 3 years ago. That person apologized to me this week. The apology was on the internet. Perhaps it was poetic justice, perhaps it's a commentary on How We Deal These Days, but I was satisfied with the apology, and the whole experience says a little bit about me, too -- me now versus me then.

Because now, I don't have time to navel gaze (only as I write this...suddenly distracted by a ...OH HI, NAVEL), and I don't have time to care so much about what people who have no bearing on my life's decisions think about my life's decisions.

I have so many many good friends in my life right now, I feel pleased with how I treat my family, and God has just been revealing things in loud vivid living technicolor to me lately, and I am humbled.

Still.

There are people who will never care for me in the way I just keep super soaking them with love, who cannot be bothered to answer my collect call when I just used my last quarter to buy them a birthday card. I wish I could put on the stealth Nicole Richie shades over my whole person, and hang a tag on the doorknob to my heart: Can't Be Bothered.

But I don't want to be numb. I want to be a caring person. I think that is why I continue to journal. To remind myself of the things that used to trifle me, and to see how I somehow stopped caring about it all between then and now, and how, after it all went down, I still had a pulse.