Mikes Thoughts

ready to deceive

Lying is only bad when someone else does it.

I read this blogpost about kids and lying. It just sparked this almost dormant thing about my own daughter lying about her moms adulterous ways. So I wondered for the thousandth and first time why. What gain from deceiving my wife now about an event from so long ago. Now I see this little thing. This rewriting. Creating this revisionist history that makes whatever happened less my wife’s fault then and more mine. Sure. Blame it on jealousy. Rewrite the memory.

All that really happened is another reason was created that lessens my desire to ever go back again. My ex wife then can change what happened by defaulting on her rabid belief that the truth was the only way to go. She would blame my daughter for lying. Scaring the hell out of her one night by ordering her out of the car for lying about smoking. My daughter then crying and calling me.

I do not forget. I have no memory issues and I don’t rewrite some event that I had closed the door on years ago. Instead what happens it’s just recreated with brand new ugliness. And it makes me remember even more. Things I hated then come rambling back.

So instead I will walk on things today. Let the echoes die down. Speak my little truths. I have Khmer family here and my daughter here I adore. All this really does is rewire some tenuous circuits. But after a walk, I see them backing down. Then I know it both matters and matters not. And I am almost good with both. I’m only human. The carefully placed deception worked. It weaved its way to the present. Made it sound plausible to someone else.

Yet we all know the uglier truth. It lives apart from the constructs my ex wife built. And the saddest part is we both know.

Lying is part of the national fabric. Like I wrote on the fediverse my mom used to say,

If you lie you must have a perfect memory.

So true mom. And none of us do. Perhaps the past is the easiest thing ever to lie on. It rests recumbent. Until a voice calls up something there. Then the full measure of that memory is found.

See you down some road. Now I walk.