Anatomy of a Liar

"Once upon a time…”

A phrase pregnant with promise,

a whispered portal to wonder,

to dragons and damsels,

to truths simple and stark—or at least, conveniently so.

But if you’re charting my personal atlas,

the scroll unfurling before you,

this particular “once upon a time”

doesn’t lead to a gingerbread house

or a glass slipper forgotten on a palace stair.

No.

It leads, directly and unapologetically,

to me.

Specifically,

to the me

who was

a liar.

Not in the clumsy, nervous, sweaty-palmed way

of a child caught with a cookie.

Oh no.

That would be amateur hour, a paltry pretense.

Mine was a grander affair.

I started small,

as all masters must.

Little white lies—

the softest fluff of deception

spun to cushion delicate feelings

or simply smooth the inconvenient edges of reality.

“I love your dress!”

“The cake was delicious.”

Tiny, innocuous fibs,

the polite fictions that oil the grinding gears of daily interaction.

Social lubricants.

A necessary grease.

Then came the colossal lies.

Towering cathedrals of conjecture,

built brick by carefully placed brick

of pure, unadulterated fantasy.

These were the epics, the sagas,

requiring extensive backstory,

a cast of characters,

and unwavering commitment

to a narrative entirely of my own ingenious design.

Empires of untruth,

erected on the shifting sands of disbelief.

Next, I mastered lying by omission.

The charged silences,

the strategic blanks

in the heart of conversations.

What was left unsaid—

the hollows in the anatomy of truth—

often spoke volumes more than any outright falsehood.

A deft brush stroke of absence.

A careful curating of inconvenient facts.

Fabrications?

Oh, darling,

I spun entire universes from ether.

Personal mythologies, past lives, imagined triumphs,

all conjured with the ease of breathing.

Each detail a shimmering thread,

woven into a fabric so convincing

even I, at times, almost believed it.

Pathological?

Perhaps.

It wasn’t a choice, you see—not truly.

More an instinct, a reflex,

a second language I spoke with effortless grace.

A compulsion, some might whisper,

but I preferred to think of it

as profound adaptability.

Prolific?

Ugh. Unceasing.

A relentless output.

Every interaction, every question,

every quiet moment of introspection

was a crack for a new narrative —

a twist of the tale— to crawl through.

My inner monologue: a rapid-fire editor,

constantly refining, revising,

always improving the script.

I was fluent in the language of deception.

Oh, no. Not merely conversational, dear.

I was a native speaker,

a bard,

a poet of pretense.

I understood all its dialects:

the whisper, the booming declaration,

the innocent shrug, the subtle shift in eye contact.

I mastered its grammar, its syntax, its myriad inflections.

I could speak it backwards, forwards,

in a dizzying cascade of half-truths and absolute inventions.

If embellishments were jewels,

I was dripped in rubies.

And sapphires.

And emeralds.

And pearls,

strung on invisible threads of carefully spun deceit.

Each lie a sparkle, a glint,

adding to my dazzling—though entirely fabricated—persona.

A walking, talking, shimmering treasury of altered facts.

A spectacle designed to entrance.

The weight of them?

A heavy, glorious burden, worn with immense pride.

If half-truths were currency,

Well, I could buy myself a ticket to heaven.

And a private jet for the journey,

a tax haven in the clouds,

a mansion on Mars,

and a direct line to the divine

with a personalized concierge

to handle all my celestial reservations.

The market value of ambiguity is boundless, you see.

The rich arrases woven from scraps of reality,

a precious commodity in the grand bazaar of human interaction.

I was the ultimate insider trader,

dealing in the priceless asset of “almost true.”

And if you haven’t thought to yourself by now,

if a tiny, nagging suspicion hasn’t burrowed its way

into the quiet corners of your mind,

a whisper of doubt, a flicker of distrust—

if you haven’t paused and wondered,

even for a fleeting second,

“Is she lying?”

about all of this,

about being a liar,

about the past being past,

about the very words cascading from this page…

You should have.

After all,

It is entirely possible

this entire confession

is just my latest,

most elaborate,

and perhaps

my most truthful

fabrication yet.