I want my real life, warts and all.

Have you ever told a lie? Said out loud something you knew to be untrue. Hoping that you can create for yourself a reality less painful than the one the truth would create. I have, sadly more times than most. At the moment those words leave your lips, you begin a journey with yourself, one where you’ll never know what really living is like. Everything, every single thing that happens from that moment on, no matter how pleasurable or meaningful, will only be but a shadow. Not real. The thing about a lie is that it works so very hard to become reality so much so that even you buy into it. A simple no when it really was a yes. A little self righteous anger, a tear perhaps and then you ignite that addictive power that comes with knowing that life’s events have been ultimately altered by your very words. I have been asking myself today about what my life could be if I wasn't such a coward. If I didn't exalt my ego so much as to create reality as opposed to living it, who would I be? I love writing...do I? I am a giving person...am I? I am content with the state of my life, I don’t envy those around me, I easily forgive, I am happy at the success of others, moving home was the best thing that could ever happen to me, I am a loyal friend...really? 

And then it dawns on me. How much of what I think is real in my life is really the figment of someone else’s imagination. An intricate and delicate web of beautiful untruths that don’t even occur to me to question. Scary thought. So have you told a lie? Pause and think of it. I’m thinking like the love of your life, you only have one. The daddy. The one that all the others stem from. As I write I’m trying to pin mine down. The one that would bring this house of cards crashing down. They've become so many, ones I've told myself, some I've told others. Some white, some bare faced, some quietly cunning and yet all identical in their effect. They have stolen my real life and left me with something I am grateful I have but am not sure I like. Help me as I try to live life differently. Courageous enough to let what will be, be. Hoping to death that my imperfections aren't more offensive than the next woman's and praying that you would do it too. If I’m a little prickly, not quite what you’d imagined, smile. I don’t want to lie anymore.