I AM TOO OLD TO LIE.
About my feelings. My intentions. Who I am.
Lying is never a good idea, but it is best left to children who don’t want to get in trouble. For adults, it’s just plain foolish.
I married, had a baby and divorced at a fairly young age. After having lived through all of that heartache and turmoil, I learned some amazing, but hard won lessons about myself and about what I needed to be happy. One of the things I realized was that lying about my feelings (especially to myself) makes me uncomfortable.
I was about 24 years old when I finally figured this out: I had to be true to myself. It gives me peace.
I wasn’t a teenager anymore, ditching school and sneaking around with my boyfriend. I was an adult. Hell, I’d been a wife and a mother. Folks are just going to have to accept me as I am. I can’t fake the funk.
That doesn’t mean I’ve given myself carte blanche to tell people on the street when I think their outfit is tacky or that if they paid even a dollar for their shoes, they were robbed. It meant that I was going to be honest with myself about what and who I wanted in my life. If I were going to allow people in my inner circle, then those people needed to love me as I loved them. It meant that I was going to be honest about my feelings. Lying about them or trying to hide them wasn’t worth it to me. It’s not the easiest path. My resolve is tested from time to time and I have to admit, sometimes it seems like it would be simpler to lie.
Case in point: A few years ago, I was getting re-married. My first wedding was in a chapel in Las Vegas, just me, my ex-husband & a pseudo Elvis impersonator. My family and friends had never quite forgiven me for that, so this time I was going to have a wedding and reception at a hotel. It was exciting, being an actual bride-to-be. My parents were gifting us a wonderful cruise for our honeymoon and Ray’s dad bought us a car. Ray & I were paying for the wedding ourselves. We were on a strict budget, so I had to come up with some parameters for inviting people - I had many more relatives & friends than space. I decided that if I hadn’t talked to someone in more than a year, I wasn’t going to invite them. Seems fair, right? Well, not everyone agreed with this logic.
I have a cousin that I’m not particularly close to. At that point, it had definitely been way more than a year (closer to 3) since we’d spoken. I didn’t know her phone number or where she lived – so it seemed like a no-brainer, she wasn’t on the guest list. One day out of the blue, I was at my parents’ and she called. She’d heard about the wedding, called my aunt to get my parent’s phone number (because we’re just that close!) and wanted to let us know that she didn’t receive her invitation.
I could have very easily caved and pretended her invite had probably gotten lost in the mail. That actually did happen to a couple of my guests. It was the perfect excuse. I contemplated using it for a fraction of a second. Then I thought, “It’s my wedding. Why I in the hell am I going to lie?” That was all I needed to remember – to tell the truth.
So, I bit the proverbial bullet and told her that I didn’t send her an invitation. That didn’t go over so well: The next sound I heard was dial tone.
I found a bit later out that my cousin was pretty pissed at me. Well of course she was! How else should you react when a distant relative you haven’t spoken to in years is getting married and you’re not invited? Betrayed and shoved aside, right?
I am not responsible for other folks’ crazy ideas about how the world works. I just know what’s was true for me. If any day should be exactly how you want, it should be your wedding day. That’s not the day to appease someone who was not even a potential guest. There was no middle ground here.
Couldn’t I have sent out just one more measly invitation? Sure, but why? To pretend for her sake that we didn’t have a non-existent relationship on my wedding day?
Nah, life’s too short. That wasn’t the truth about how I felt and like I said: I’m too damned old to lie.
