I WILL ALWAYS BE A LIAR

when the performance becomes the person

The mask became the face.

I will always be a liar.

Not the kind who invents elaborate fictions

or fabricates entire lives.

The subtler kind.

The kind who learned early

that truth is a luxury

most people can't afford to hear.

So I mastered the art of saying nothing honestly

"I'm fine" when I'm fracturing.

"It doesn't matter" when it's the only thing that does.

"I'm happy for you" when envy tastes like copper.

These aren't lies, we tell ourselves.

They're manners.

The oil that keeps everything

running smoothly between people

too afraid to admit what they actually think.

But here's what I've learned:

Everything lies.

Your face lies when you smile through fury.

Your body lies when it says yes but means no.

Memory lies

it's just edited footage,

director's cut, best angles only.

Even love lies.

It promises forever.

Delivers until it doesn't.

Then rewrites the story

so the ending feels inevitable.

We are built entirely

from strategic omissions

and performance art

we've mistaken for personality.

I've told so many versions of myself

depending on who's listening,

what they need,

what I need them to believe

that I've lost track

of which one was real.

Maybe none of them.

Maybe all of them.

Maybe the self is just

the lie we tell most consistently.

Here's the part that keeps me up:

I don't know if I'm lying to you

or if I've become the lie so completely

that this is the truth now.

The performance calcified into identity.

The mask fused to the face.

And when I'm alone

truly alone,

no audience, no mirror, no witness

I still don't know who I am.

Because I spent so long

being what everyone needed

that the original blueprint

has been painted over too many times to recover.

You want honesty?

Here it is:

I will always be a liar

because I don't know how to be anything else.

The truth is a room I locked myself out of.

I lost the key somewhere

between who I was

and who I had to become

to survive being seen.

So when I say "I love you"

believe me.

Or don't.

I'm not sure it matters.

I'm not even sure I know what those words mean

beyond the shape my mouth makes

when I want you to stay.

And maybe that's the most honest thing I've said all year:

I want you to stay.

Even if it's for the wrong version.

Even if she's a fiction.

Even if I'm just the most convincing lie

I've ever told.