Of Deceit..

They've all told you lies..

They kept you in the dark because of their fear that the particular light you were shining might illuminate their darkness too. They stopped you from making choices because of their own discomfort and cognitive dissonance. They told you it's all for your own good, when really it just suited them. They made you feel like a freak when the individuality you expressed freaked them out, because of their faulty perception of how it might reflect on them. They hid the truth from you purely for their own convenience. They lied.

You spent ages summoning up the words to express things, ideas buried so deep that were so very important to you, being so careful to take the time to find words which might appeal to their frames of reference. All they did was laugh at you, or dismiss you, or simply make you wrong. They trod all over your sensibilities with their size ten boots and never looked back, leaving you to seethe silently with no recourse. They said they support you, but only ever did it on their terms. They said that they'd always listen. They lied.

They told you that if you do all your work, study hard and behave well that you can go on to get any job you like, that you won't have to struggle as they have. They said that the future will be better, that you would be better off than they were when they were young, but they didn't tell you that the whole game is rigged. They didn't tell you how debt will enslave you, how the government will screw you over, how the media will propagandise you. They taught you to believe in falsehoods. They lied.

They espoused loyalty and dedication to the corporation, told you you can go far if you work hard, but really they were just reading from a script because they were told to by the boss. They gave you just enough encouragement and praise to keep you from questioning your worth, so that your little cog in their machine kept turning. They promised you promotion, knowing that the figures just didn't add up and in full awareness of the downturn to come. They told you your job was safe. They lied.

They wrapped you up in a blanket of affection, swept you off your feet and promised you the Earth. They made you feel like nothing could touch you, high up on the pedestal they built for you. They said it would be forever, that nothing could break you apart. They fostered your dependence and manufactured your consent, whilst whispering of love and dedication, but all too soon they revealed their true colours. They used you up, then cast you aside the moment you tried to express your individuality, bruising and abusing you with their bullying. They told you it was love. They lied.

They said they'd always have your back, through thick and thin, amigos to the end. They propped up your bullshit with theirs as you enabled each other, in a mutual dance of slow self-defeatism. They pretended it was all good to your face, then casually cussed you down behind closed doors. You accepted the idiotic arrangement of fools because you couldn't find the strength to break out alone, but the moment you began to rise to grace they turned against you without a second thought. They told you you'd never make it alone. They lied.

All those lies..

The deception of a lifetime flows like crude oil across the ocean of your experience, polluting and choking everything with its chemical blackness. So easy to dismiss the significance of this array of disappointment back into the mists of time, pretend it doesn't really impact on who you are in the here and now. Disillusionment does that, but at the expense of true awareness. Awareness that is essential if you are to turn the accumulated colourlessness of the past into the bright multi-coloured brilliance of the future that you know you deserve.

At some point, too, you realise that blame must be taken out of the equation. You have to get to a position where you can forgive the lies and try to accept the reasons behind them. It seems impossible to start with, but eventually it gets easier to understand why they deceived you, or at least to accept that they just weren't capable of honesty. Point is, you absolutely have to expose every lie you've ever swallowed, understanding the nature of each deception, in order to avoid falling through the same cracks in reality as those who misled you.

Lies beget lies, but truth - in all its humbling, grounding, powerful, glorious light - will always shine through even the most tangled web, if only we can bare the exposure.

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.