Lies I Have Told

After reading this, I've decided it's time.

It's time to write the blog post I have been putting off for years.  Because no one wants to read this.  Go ahead, stop reading.  But I have to do it and I have to do it now.  It's not a big deal, or anything terrible.  But I need to do it for...let's say therapy.

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My freshman year of college I lied a lot to fit in, which is a good explanation of why it was so hard for me to make friends.

Here, I thought, here I can tell people I have had boyfriends, because everyone cares about boyfriends. Of course I'd never had a boyfriend.  Or a date.

In high school, I was one of those girls who never got asked to a dance.  At fourteen I just asked guys myself.  One dance, I took my friend Dan and he spent the night looking forlornly at other girls and being disinterested, and I realized he didn't want to be there with me, which blew my fucking mind because I thought I was awesome.

Three years later Steve called me an hour before prom to bail and buy drugs.  I was murderous.  I asked him because my 'best friend' Jon - who I spent years blocking from my memory, who had my undying puppy love, who could ask anything of me, who had to have known how much craved him - he told me - and I hate talking about this - he told me he wouldn't go with me because, and I quote, "Well, Rass, you won't impress anyone.  I need to go with...I need to go with a woman."

Holy fuck.

Anyway, so when people asked freshman Rassles about high school, I told them I just broke up with someone. It felt true enough.  I also told them things like, "Well, of course, I could have had sex, but I just haven't found the right guy" which is what all virgins say, but it wasn't true.  No one ever tried.

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I didn't drink my freshman year of college because I thought it was stupid and I had important shit to study so I could be a veterinarian.  Making friends was hard, so I would go to parties by myself and try to meet people.

But people, especially boys, will not talk to sober 18 year old girls.

Sometimes I would just go to a party and buy a solo cup and pretend I had beer. I wanted to fit in so badly.  I tried very hard to pretend to listen to the music everyone seemed to be obsessed with.  I become a Dave Matthews Band fan, an Aerosmith fan, a Jimmy Buffet fan.  I really, really tried. I lied and said my dad took me to a Jimmy Buffet concert once.  My dad doesn't give a shit about Jimmy Buffet. 

But I learned, slowly, that my classmates didn't trust me.  Not because I lied about going to a Jimmy Buffet concert (seriously, what?) but because I didn't get fucked up.

The few friends I made were wary to invite me to parties and usually were ashamed of me when we got there, but I never understood why.  I spent a lot of time saying, "No, go on, I'll be fine." 

Absolutely no one trusted me when I tried to take care of the hammered girls throwing up all over the bathroom, passing out on toilets while their friends took all of the incorrect steps on dealing with a girl on the verge of alcohol poisoning.  They would get angry at me for helping, tell me I was self-righteous, that they could see how I despised them and they would hoist up their tube tops and stumble in their heels, banging their knees on doorframes, wild-eyed and whammered. I tried to nurse of a lot of girls I didn't know.

Then one day in January, I got those looks and exploded. Crying.  Yelling, "YOU KNOW WHY I DON'T GET DRUNK?" I told them that when I was fourteen I went to a college party, blacked out, woke up in a strange house and vowed never to drink again.

Of course, that never happened.

But it was magic.  I had respect. People approached me at parties.  A lot of, "You know, I thought you just were like weird, you know, I didn't know you been there.  I knew there was something about you.  I could tell there was a bigger story, I could tell you were cool, I knew there was a reason, I'm so sorry you went through that..." 

I never even insinuated - I mean, later I learned - and by later, I mean in 2011 - apparently this story morphed into "Rassles got drunk and was raped when she was fourteen."  Which is annoying, but I guess kind of predictable.  Only one person ever asked me that many details, and I told her I didn't remember. 

But people seemed to genuinely care about me.  Only after they thought I was special.  I really resented a lot of them for it. 

Then I came clean to a couple friends years later, and they were all like, "so what? who fucking cares if you lied when you were 18?  We were all assholes" which was awesome.

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Sometimes I think that lie was the worst decision I ever made.  Because of that I lie, I pledged a sorority. Because of that sorority, I didn't transfer schools, I stopped wanting to be a doctor, I started drinking and smoking cigarettes and turned into a general asshole. But I loved every terrible, mood-swinging minute of it.

During pledging, we had to run.  A lot.  And on the first day of running I fell, and a swarm of sorority banshees surrounded me, heckling (Were you born a fat, slimy, scumbag puke piece o' shit, Private Pyle, or did you have to work on it?) and I was pissed, I couldn't fucking believe the garbage they were screaming (I will gouge out your eyeballs and skull-fuck you!) who the ruddy fuck do these ogre harpies think they are, they can go fuck a fencepost for all I care, these (you had best square your ass away and start shitting me Tiffany cufflinks or I will definitely fuck you up) bone-faced cumdumpsters, I hate them, I hate them...and I yelled that my knee, my knee, oh, my knee...I don't have any cartilage in my knee, I can't run anymore, which shut them up real fucking quick, but was also a lie.

They never even let me try to run after that, whenever I asked, probably because they were afraid I would get seriously hurt, and then the school would kick them out for hazing.  But I felt guilty, I was terrified of not fitting in, I watched my pledgemates run and stumble and endure, I berated myself to sleep and swore that for the next five weeks I would do everything perfectly, that I would help everyone however I could, that I would come clean...

That's the problem with lies.  People are so darn nice about them.  They're so understanding, so worried, so genuine.  

I never did tell them the truth.  This sorority booted liars.  They kicked two of them out of my pledge class.  But they would have kicked me out, I have no doubt.  They had no patience for people who couldn't cut it.  None.  So I just let it go.  

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Oh, it feels nice getting all of these twelve year old lies on the internet.

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