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When I left prison, I dedicated my life to abstinence from drug and alcohol use. It’s important because the decision was a vector. It was about direction. Cardinals. North. I wanted to go somewhere in a straight line. I hoped somewhere on the other end there would be a payoff. Direction and magnitude. Vector.
The problem with liars is they’re an unworkable geometry. All problem solving begins with truth, so if someone refuses to give you the starting point…
The other problem is it becomes a solution, an addiction, a way of dealing with a problem. The problem is fear of rejection. If I tell the truth, I will experience rejection. But that’s precisely why telling the truth is so important — it accounts for that fear. It’s not easy. Cowards lie.
Lying speaks other truths: I have no faith in your love for me, I have no faith in your empathy. Lying talks about wounds, about childhoods. Exposure.
I still crave a drink sometimes. I think of coke’s euphoria. They call it addiction. Addiction to the drug, and addiction to the person you are on the drug. On the drug I’m dark. I love the darkness. All-consuming like being soaked in warm oil. Power. So it requires a strong antidote for the addiction: self-awareness.
Lying morphs our heads and hearts. Changes our reality. It doesn’t alter their reality, but distorts our own. The flexing of electromagnetic fields. Cartesian planes of truth and untruth merge until they look the same. Interpretation. And the brain does not care about being right. That’s a social construct. The brain cares about making sense.
I’ve never been good about setting boundaries. It’s what happens when you’ve been violated for a long time. Have always felt it was my responsibility to make it right. Struggled to set boundaries because my empathy made me feel their pain despite my own.
I hate being manipulated. Got a lot of that from my mother growing up. Kind of hate mothers. I felt guilty my entire childhood for something. A voice: You’re here for me. Man of the house. Ten-years-old. Carried a lot. I kind of hate women.
My mother always told me my father was a liar, but I was young. You don’t see when you’re very young. You just have open eyes. Then one day, a little later in childhood. You see everything.
Lying is a drug. Addiction. It gifts our dimensions. Paradigms. This is truth. Also: The person I am when I use is the real me. Another lie. I need alcohol to write well. Another lie. I am more fun when I drink. More relaxed, exciting, capable. More adjusted. Lies.
Don’t talk about dad that way. Things thought, but never spoken. Then she tells her truth: “You are a liar just like your father. Worthless just like your father.”
“I’m…sorry,” I tell her. That, too, is my fault.
3–1/2" floppies. Remember those? Held about 1MB of data. Reach really far back and you’ll find the original 5–1/4" floppies. Those were actually floppy. Are you sure you wish to rewrite this disk? Yes/No.
Like the brain of an addict, because reality is whatever I say it is now. Authority. Hubris.
My father was addicted to methamphetamine during my younger years, until I was thirteen or so. The dirty, cook-it-on-foil, suck-it-into-a-plunger, then shoot-it-into-your-veins kind. Crank. Straight to the fucking brain. Burnout.
A memory of Iraq: the site of a crashed helicopter on fire. Such a strange thought: This is my father.
I love my parents, but I fucking hate them. Know what? I hate fathers too.
The terrible thing about pathological liars is there’s no starting point. So when he tells me he was always there for me, that he moved across the country to save me, he believes it. No starting point. Floating, anchorless.
When people return to convince you they gave up everything to save you, they steal all you have left.
Truth:
I saved me when I was a boy. I saved me when I moved from Oregon to New York. I saved me when I left for Iraq. I saved me when I went through my divorce. I saved me when I came home from Afghanistan. I saved me during layoffs, foreclosure, bankruptcy, addiction. When I put a gun to my head.
I never needed you.
You don’t get to come back when I’m thirty and pretend you saved me. You don’t get to take that from me. You don’t get to take my anger and replace it with latent fatherhood. You don’t get to rewrite the disk.
Lies. Like refilling an empty liquor bottle with any old thing you like.
Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman’s Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.
Delighted to hear the hate. And the anger. And the worries of what could come if one slips and falls and ends up wrong side up in a gutter. But hold on warrior poet. Your wars are you. Lies included. Mostly those indelible lies that linger into the witching hour when most are asleep. Those truths that never existed, the ghosts of war and the like. Knowing, as a soldier myself, war has no likes.
Hell yes, be you.
Anger and the lies that are no longer are what makes us. The truth later. After the fight comes the return home. The home that never existed as we thought. And there the real struggle begins. Battles in alien fields are not really personal. Going home, that is an entirely different matter. Be there. Done it. And after the jungles came urban life and home. And finally, after decades realizing home is you. And you are it. And reconciliation began there. A soul's journey unleashed.
You are so courageous in sharing yourself. And you do it so eloquently. Today, with the wisdom of 70 years behind me, I forgive toxic people because they certainly are the result of their demons. I don't necessarily want to be around them, I simply forgive them.
Well done as usual.