Dear Jessica Brennan,
In a time long ago, called 2012, being a perennially slow learner, I made a conscious decision to disregard what my gut was telling me about a person and just trust him. Why wouldn’t I? I’m not a lie detector. This came on the heels of another significant breach of trust that had left me all but dead inside.
This act of once again accepting the words of someone who was particularly good at taking advantage of naive people, then disposing of them when they were of no more use to him, ended up being one of the most painful times I have ever had to endure.
I am a lie detector, turned out to be the difficult lesson. I should have trusted myself.
Everything this person pretended to be, ended up to be untrue. He wasn’t caring or loyal. His kindness always came with a significant price, and if he didn’t get his own way, he turned into a ranting, screaming lunatic. Sometimes he stretched the truth, but also at times he just lied to get what he wanted. I am speaking past tense, but I am sure that he hasn’t changed.
Yet still I trusted him.
I like to call this part of my life the Donkey-Ears Era, because each time I caught him in a lie or saw him behave in a way that was not ethical, he convinced me that either I had misunderstood or that I was simply wrong. I took the blame, made excuses for him, accepted the verbal beating and carried on, all the while with my self esteem getting lower and lower, until there wasn’t a trace of it left.
Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot said, “What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” She had obviously felt the same pain that I felt in those days, and still feel at times when I think back. With each lie, and each turning of the blind eye, I not only became an accomplice but I became weaker and smaller under the power of a person who had a lot of charisma but no obvious conscience.
If I was reading this, I might ask, “Why didn’t you just squeal on him?” “Why didn’t you just walk away?” The answers are of course a lot more complex than the questions.
I guess for me, I had a lot invested in the friendship, and while now I look back and realize that in a way I was being groomed to be complicit, at that time I kept thinking the highs outweighed the lows of it all. Even though I spent my days anxious all the time, walking on egg-shells afraid he would lash out, I also had much of my identity at stake.
In the end, I had to come to terms with why I continued to allow myself to be drawn into friendships with people who couldn’t live without drama. Why couldn’t I stand up for myself in this situation when I didn’t have difficulty doing so with others? Why was I so willing to put up with chronic deceit from this person? It took a lot of work, and when I finally had walked away I did some editing.
First, I cut the offender and all who were part of his life, right out of mine. This was a necessary survival tactic. Then I cut off all my hair, as a visible demonstration that the woman (the old me) who would tolerate this kind of behaviour was gone. For a while I didn’t trust anything out of anyone’s mouth. This wasn’t particularly healthy, but for me it was how I approached it. I was terrified to trust anyone ever again.
I was sad most (all) of the time, bitter and became depressed. I questioned every decision I made. I was mostly angry with myself. How could I have trusted someone who was so conniving?
Eventually though, the distancing was the best prescription. I scanned my group of friends and saw the ones that I really could trust, and I discussed the pain I was feeling with them. I’m sure they got sick of hearing about it, but their validation was really helpful. Having some people in my life who knew the whole story, allowed me to share the burden. I’m sure if the offender knew how many people know all the details, he would be angry, maybe scream and shout and jump up and down. But that would have zero impact on me now.
“Jump away. I don’t care.”
I looked back in my life and recognized some similar characters from the past – all sizzle and no stick – who I had been impressed with, and I started to identify the indicators of this kind of personality, so that I wouldn’t fall prey again.
When the parting of ways occurred, some people didn’t get it. Some blamed me for being weak. That’s fine, maybe I was. I’m not sure that being weak though gives another person the right to be cruel and dishonest. I gave him my complete trust, and he carelessly used that trust against me.
When I look back at those years I realize that my life looked like an EKG reading. Up and down with ridiculous extremes and never on a solid footing. The lies were so easily and strategically told that I eventually didn’t even believe him when he was telling the truth. How could I? And when the real truth began to appear, like all tipping-points, it came in a tsunami; crystal clear, and brought with it pain; a new, full knowing of the dishonesty I had actually given power to. I felt ashamed.
The loneliness eventually did dissipate and trust returned with a more 360 view of true friendship. I learned to use my lie detector and to put all my faith in it; in me.
Trust is one of the most valued traits I carry with me now. I have swiftly cut people out of my life who prove to be blatantly untrustworthy. I am a living breathing zero-tolerance zone for those who work to make me feel physically or emotionally unsafe, and thanks to my on-the-ground-training, I can spot the users a mile away.
I had to live through the Donkey-Ears Era to get here, but better late than never.
Remember that you are a lie-detector. When you think someone is lying to you, they likely are. When you find out for sure they are, keeping them in your life can never be a scenario where the good outweighs the bad regardless of how comfortable you’ve become tiptoeing on those eggshells; enabling their lies.
Dear Jessica, much of what I write to you in this blog is meant to save you from having to learn the hard way; the way I mostly have. I know that as a living breathing human woman though, you will need to learn some things the hard way. It is just a fact.
My advice? Don’t choose the hard way on this one.
Love,
Mum xo
