Be Real - For Real
During my first two decades of occupying space in this big ol’ world of ours, I never gave much mind to who I was, more or less what I was becoming. I would openly share my feelings, my thoughts, and my fears but I was not necessarily living truthfully. And then, before I successfully made it through middle school, any plans I had for my life’s future got thrown out the window once I became a teenager.
Pre-teen, my three sisters and I mostly raised ourselves as our single father worked full-time and went to school at night. I would tell lies to gain acceptance with the other kids in the neighborhood and try not to be the last one picked for Wiffle ball. I would exaggerate about my antics on the bike or add about 20’ of distance to the skateboard wheelie I pulled yesterday when no one was looking. The expanded and fabricated truth never really seemed to do any real damage, but it certainly gnawed at me.
My world got thrown on its head when at 13, I surrendered myself to a seemingly dead-end existence as a drug addict. As a committed addict, I felt like I had no choice except to assume the role of a part-time drug dealer. The economics of pure consumption as an addict was not sustainable for me, a soon-to-be unemployed high school dropout. It made no sense at all to just use the stuff without also trying to profit from it and stretch the quantity of goods a little further at the same time. My inventory management and fiscal responsibility skills were already being formed. Deception, cheating, and flat-out lying seemed to become a necessity, just to survive the rough and tumble life of an addict in Baltimore.
I got smacked upside my face at 17 with the hard lesson that lying to my father, BigBird, was not an option, especially from his punk-ass son, yours truly. My dad had already given up on the dreams we had previously shared of his only son going on to college and becoming a respectable citizen. I somehow thought the fabrication of fantastic lies would shield me from the responsibility of wrecking my dad’s car the night before. Although it would be more than a year later until my first drug overdose, the pressure of lies and hustle was building up inside of me. I was getting reckless, and it was taking its toll. After surviving my second overdose less than two months later, I knew I'd be dead soon if I didn't stop.
Barely a month after my 26th birthday, I abused drugs for the last time. I gathered all the angst from my missteps and missed opportunities to then fight like hell, trying to make up for the lost time and attempting to regain my father’s trust. Almost 20 years of total truth later, my dad finally let down his guard and believed everything coming out of my mouth. I had been dead-straight with him that entire time but I think he needed to see it and feel in order to truly believe it. I wish he could have had more than just a single year of having total faith that his son’s words and actions were congruent before BigBird would take his last breath and pass from this earth.
My commitment to truth and my aversion to untruths became documented as the first of my eight personal life values were written, sometime between my first divorce and my second marriage. The singular polished honesty sentence I built was not an entitled noble statement but rather simply unspoken righteousness that brushed me to my core.
I maintain a scorecard of the lies I tell, mostly to myself, these untruths I spew, averaging once every three days. The lies I tell to others, averaging once every five days, are the harder ones to swallow. The self-score list is comprised mostly of deflating doubts. It was the opposite types of things I told myself as I turned my back on drugs and dug deeper and deeper to achieve success with my athletics and business career. The list of broken truths I speak out loud is half avoidance of the sad stories that I am m tired of hearing come from my own mouth. The other half of presented lies to others is mostly a 10% exaggeration of victory or defeat, seemingly for acceptance or possibly sympathy.
Either intended to motivate, inspire, or seek tenderness, I am mostly lie-averse. Barely able to comprehend the massive distrust book I would have had to maintain if I rolled back the clock to my druggie days, I now take pleasure in catching the slippery little dishonesties when then fall from my mouth. Sometimes I am able to stop short with these slips or ask for a take-back, but if not, I will for me, and for my dad, own it, all of it.
