When I was a kid I couldn't stop myself from lying. It was like oxygen to me, and I only truly stopped when another girl came into my life who lied bigger and worse than I could ever imagine. She sobered my addiction, and I have otherwise been so much better ever since, but I'm never entirely sure why. It was the same time that I started writing poetry. Writing is my outlet for emotions. Writing, especially fictional, fantasy things, cures my need to lie, as I am lying, just in the most acceptable form.
I wonder if that girl ever realised why she lied. I think she was very unhappy with her own life, and wanted more, and made up a boyfriend, and when she wanted attention, but didn't know entirely how to get it without seeming rude and self-involved, she made up a story about being pregnant. She made up so much stuff that had absolutely no credibility to it. And one day, I decided to call her bluff. I made up my own story, and I did it damn well. And she believed every word of it. And I made all these loop holes for myself. I told her she was the only one I'd told, so no one else knew, and I couldn't deal with other people asking me about it, so can we keep it between us? And if you want to talk to someone about it, I understand, just don't use my name, or talk to someone who I don't know, so it doesn't come back to me. And she lapped it all up, and she was heartbroken for me and genuinely fell into this massive ironic trap I'd set out for her. And I loved it, it was a brilliant moment for me, and I felt like I'd achieved something so real that day.
Of course, two years later, the rumour about my virginity leaked through our friendship group, and she heard something, I don't know what, but something probably close to the truth. And she believed it, and it cemented what I had previously lied to her about anyway. We weren't very close after that, so I never explained to her that it was a lie. I never corrected her. So to this day, she still thinks I was sexually abused when I was twelve by my Dad's late-best-friend.
Oops.