I learned to lie the way some kids learn to ride a bike—gradually, with plenty of scrapes and falls along the way, but once I got the hang of it, I never forgot how. It started as a survival mechanism. A way to navigate a world that often felt unpredictable, where the truth didn’t always work in my favor.
My childhood was filled with landmines. Say the wrong thing, get punished. Show weakness, get ignored. Tell the truth about something you did wrong, and you learned very quickly that honesty wasn’t always the best policy—it was the fastest route to consequences. But a lie? A lie could smooth things over. A lie could buy time. A lie could protect me.
By the time I was eight, I was good at it. By ten, I was fluent. And by the time I was old enough to understand that most people lived their lives differently, I was already too deep in the habit to stop.
The Lies That Kept Me Safe
My parents weren’t cruel, not in the dramatic way that makes for a gripping memoir, but they were unpredictable. My mother would fly into a rage over something small—an unwashed dish, a pair of shoes left by the door. My father was quiet, distant, emotionally unavailable in the way that made me wonder if he actually saw me at all.
I figured out quickly that the easiest way to avoid trouble was to tell them what they wanted to hear.
“No, I didn’t spill that juice.”
“Yes, I finished my homework.”
“I wasn’t the one who broke the lamp.”
Sometimes I’d get away with it. Other times I’d get caught. But even when I did, the punishment was never worse than what I imagined it would have been if I’d told the truth from the start. Lying felt like a kind of armor, something that kept me safe from the unpredictable world of adults.
And then, somewhere along the way, lying became more than just a shield. It became a way to be someone else.
The Lies That Made Me More Interesting
I was a quiet kid. Shy. Awkward. I never felt like I was enough—never funny enough, never cool enough, never important enough. But a well-placed lie? That could change things.
So, I made up stories. I told my classmates I had a cousin who was a famous musician. That my uncle was a stuntman. That I had been to Europe twice, even though I’d never left my home state.
I didn’t lie to deceive people. Not exactly. I lied because I wanted to be interesting, because I wanted to belong. Because I wanted to be someone worth paying attention to.
I remember the first time I felt the high of a truly successful lie. I was twelve, sitting in the back of a school bus, listening to two kids talk about scary movies. I jumped into the conversation, telling them I had once lived in a haunted house. I made up creaky floorboards and ghostly whispers and a rocking chair that moved on its own. Their eyes widened. They hung on my every word. And in that moment, I wasn’t just the quiet kid who sat in the back—I was a storyteller, the center of attention, the most interesting person in the room.
I wanted to live in that moment forever.
The Lies That Built a Life
Lying became second nature. I didn’t even think about it anymore. When people asked about my weekend, I made it sound better than it was. When they asked how I was doing, I painted on the answer they wanted to hear.
By the time I was an adult, lying wasn’t something I chose to do—it was something that happened. It was instinct. It was a reflex.
In college, I told a professor I had a family emergency to get out of an exam. In reality, I just hadn’t studied. But I wasn’t some lazy student blowing off work—I was a victim of circumstance. And people are kinder to victims.
At work, I exaggerated my skills. No, I had never used Photoshop before, but when my boss asked, I nodded and said, “Of course.” And then I stayed up all night watching tutorials, trying to make the lie into a truth.
I told people I was an only child. In reality, I had a younger sister I barely spoke to. I wasn’t trying to erase her; it just felt easier. Less complicated. The truth was messy.
The Lies That Became a Cage
The problem with lying is that it starts as a way to escape your reality, but eventually, it becomes your reality. And the scariest thing is, at some point, you stop knowing what’s real and what isn’t.
I started avoiding people who knew me too well because they might notice the inconsistencies. I started keeping stories straight in my head like an actor memorizing multiple scripts.
Then, one day, a friend asked me a simple question—“Wait, I thought you said you hated sushi?”—and I froze.
Because I did say that. But then, another time, I had said it was my favorite food.
That’s when it hit me: I had no idea which one was true.
And that terrified me.
The Truth About Lying
I wish I could say I had some dramatic moment of reckoning, but the truth is, I got tired. Tired of pretending. Tired of spinning stories. Tired of feeling like my life was a script I was constantly rewriting.
So, I started telling the truth.
At first, it was small.
“No, I actually haven’t seen that movie.”
“I don’t know how to do that, but I can learn.”
“I was just feeling kind of lonely this weekend.”
It felt like jumping into ice water. Painful. Exposing. But also—strangely—relieving. Because once I stopped lying, I realized how exhausting it had been to keep up with all the fabrications.
I still struggle with it sometimes. When someone asks how I’m doing, I want to say “Great!” even when I’m not. When I mess up at work, I want to blame something else. The impulse is still there, lingering like an old addiction. But I fight it.
Because the truth is, I don’t want to live in a house built out of lies.
It’s too much work to keep it from falling down.