liar, liar

my confession is

that i don’t trust myself enough

to survive even the smallest of falls

without saying i toppled down a mountain

i crashed and burned on the way

but i’m still here, still breathing all the same

and what a hero i am for it

so i avoid the rocks and forks in the road

i watch mountains only from a distance

i walk on the other side of the street

where no one is watching

alone and aloof, arms swinging

and music blaring, stuck in my own head

and i stay this way, because i fear

i will take the same path down

over and over again

and carry on all the same

wiping the sweat from my face

riding the coattails of normalcy

bleak and safe and sweet

and comfortably miserable

until i crack open like a skull

on the pavement; i will break and leak

and everyone who knows my name

will learn to hate me

even now, unbroken, i trip and stumble

i always find myself faltering

through the speed of the chase

of whispered conversations

with words i don’t like or mean

but still use and speak into existence

heart racing, face smiling

cowardice scheming

like i’m the best you’ve ever seen do it

i’m left with no choices of my own

anxiety, the angel on my right shoulder,

and judgment, the demon on my left,

will push and pull me through

as they always have

fraudulence is the key to my soul

dare to unlock it and i just might

disappear

along with my vapid pretty words

and my happy smiling senseless face

always one to exaggerate my worth

yet never one to make the smallest sound

without someone asking me first

and so people come to me with hands out

beggars, they are

for my worthless attention

and my stories, my eyes and my ears

and beggars will be choosers

no matter what they say

even unbroken, i pour myself out into them

because i know nothing else

as i fill their buckets to the brim

with my time and my desperation

with my truths and my lies

and i carry them all home two-handed

with sore legs and aching fingers

regardless of the time or place

never to return to the scene

of the meekest crimes

yet always stumbling upon them as i walk

tripping over my feet as i go

and over the trueness of my heart

even more so

~

Thank you guys for reading! This one’s a bit of a vulnerable piece, as it’s about a part of myself I’m not proud of. I’ve struggled with lying ever since I was a kid, sometimes for attention or sympathy. Usually though, it was a way to deflect conversations away from my actual true self, who I felt ashamed of. My own truths, and my own life, never felt good or valid enough.

For the record, I do just want to say as a sort of follow-up to this that I am currently in therapy for various reasons, including this one. I spent so much time not thinking about what I was actually doing and saying to the people in my life, because I wasn’t proud or happy to be myself, and in being this way, I hadn’t realized how much I had neglected myself and my heart through so much lying, people-pleasing, and self-resenting behaviors.

In the aftermath of trying to live a more authentic life for my own happiness, there’s a lot of fear and doubt alongside the shame, and that’s what inspired this piece. 💕