What if I told all of you that for these 11 months that I’ve been here, I have been lying? A lie that started small, but circumstances made it necessary to repeat the lie further, to a wider audience. News got around, much to my reluctance, and eventually the lie has spread far enough such that it has now become the truth.
Repeat a lie enough, and it becomes the truth. Except it will never be the truth, and I don’t have the guts to admit that I have been lying. But I have too much at stake to lose now, and I can’t revert back to square one to retell the truth again. So I will have to live with this lie, a lie wherein my image and self-esteem rests upon, a lie fabricated in a moment of haste and lack of introspection. A careless lie that spread too far, and now impossible to retrieve.
Does it really matter? No, it doesn’t. It will affect no one, because it concerns no one but myself; it will implicate no one else. But the guilt eats away at me on days when the lie is repeated again by an unsuspecting interlocutor, when I hoped that it would fade away over time — but it doesn’t. I don’t even repeat this lie myself anymore, this lie has not come out of my mouth in a long time, but the lie lives on because other people regurgitate it as though it is the truth. Which, to be fair, it is the truth to them because how are they supposed to know otherwise? I have hid it too well.
I’m not being my authentic self, I’m not being truthful with people who otherwise deserve the truth. But I have come too far now to turn back, so I won’t. Maybe I’ll burn all evidence that matter just so I can perhaps convince myself that my lie will one day become the truth.
And carry this lie to my grave I will.
; 