The lies it told

Many writers have stated that their first forms of writing came about through the lies they told as children either in letters to nobody, to their teachers, their friends, of some exaggerated feat or torture from home, or to their parents about how good they have been that day.

The first time I forged a letter was in second grade. I practiced my mother's signature over and over again and about once every other week I would get myself out of class to go climbing up trees down the street by exclaiming that again my awful teeth required another visit to the dentist or that the next day my actually damaged tonsils would be due for yet another examination, or that we would be leaving town that Friday for a family event- anything to get me out of class and into dirt. 

The short stories came about the next year. I'd read and collect inspiration from dirty comics in the book section at Tower Records, before it acquired an actual tower, was one low level, and classically video-rental-spot-periwinkle with carpet instead of wooden floors. I'd hide in a corner of the store and read them wide eyed learning about things most of the kids in my town wouldn't even know existed until they were about sixteen, maybe older. I met a guy recently who didn't know a cervix was smaller than the actual vaginal cavity until I just told him a few weeks back. To say I grew up fast would be an understatement.

Weird Aeon Flux influences musings and celebrities. The ones I thought I was supposed to look like when I was older. Of their cars, parties, strange affairs, missing pets, dysfunctional families that seemed normal but had hidden secrets like of the dentist who wore high heels behind his wife's back. A story that went missing from my collection when I was nine.

I wrote of lies at a very young age. 

Mostly I wrote depictions of what I was surrounded by.

Then they became me.

Eventually I would blame my pen. It would go scritching and scratching in front of my sleep deprived or pilled up young face for hours through the night dreaming up what could only be fantasy for all of these things I was supposed to have done by the time I was twenty-five. By now I should have shaved my head in Japan three years ago having spent a winter in the mountains living among monks. I would have started only one business and it would have gotten me all the successes I would have wanted to accomplish had I kept making clothes after sophomore year. I should be another three languages deep, including Mayan, and I would be living in a big loft in a brick building around Howard, downtown- tall ceilings, grey cement walls, baroque railings that didn't serve a purpose other than to distinguish what each part of the space was dedicated to. A big open shower with sheer curtains in order to never hide the body from sight, lots of plants, no tables, just shelves and books. I imagined the books would be stacked over  the shelves and be like shelves and tables themselves holding up my various cups of wine, tea, ashtrays, coke mirrors, make up holders, places for pens, ink, money and objects I would happen upon in the street or spend a couple dollars on.

The pen did it for me more than any friend.

That's probably how I've gotten so good at leaving all the time.

Those were lies that actually kept me going- the ones I would write in the rain, sick and sleepless not knowing if I could get another free train ride home. They weren't lies but attempts at making what I was doing bigger than it seemed. It made drawing, writing, playing music, hallucinating, and being awake for several days straight more bearable. To know that someone, somewhere lived like this and maybe one day I would too. 

This, now, is the part of my life that resulted from a lie I couldn't live out any longer. I couldn't lie about it now because it doesn't matter. Like the average citizen in the U.S. I am broke right now, a little bit depressed, still dashingly hopeful, and constantly searching, constantly looking for something that won't lie to me, tell me that I have to settle because it's more realistic, or easier to do.  Something raw, exposed, piercing, cracking a bit at the edges like a well used desk, and frank- hurt and all.

I've never liked it too easy. I've got to get bruised a little. I've got to feel like I am working for something other than just four more walls to contain me- like this shit wasn't handed to me because I was born into it or because somebody might get a good couple months of brass tacks fucking- but perhaps grinding still the potential of my ever-aching hands for a long letter I will write myself later about how actually surprising life has been without having gone through all the lies, with the ones I've felt like I have had to tell, or maybe the ones I fucked through, like the ones I am trying to shake off now. 

Still, I write made up lies. They are hidden in my work like clues kept in boxes, little words, or weird blogs. Mostly though, they are not my own. My own are less frequent, always adjusting, exposing themselves bit by bit,submission after submission, into something very open, very embarrassing, but completely myself. It will happen again. But it's okay, because at the very least, I am still writing like a writer. I'm lying like a liar and loving like a good little lover should.