Hey white liar, the truth comes out a little at a time, and it spreads just like a fire. –Miranda Lambert, White Liar

Friends, I have always been a story teller. One of my absolute favorite things to do is to get to know people, to learn all of those nifty little facts about them and hear it all for the first time. I love going out to dinner with friends that I haven’t seen in a while and catching up on all the events that have happened since the last time we spoke. I love to hear what I call “stories” and I love listening to drama that’s ensued and has long since been resolved. I even like to listen to my clients tell the stories of their lives, to recount events of their past, to understand what exactly it was that brought them here.

The truth is that everybody’s got a story. And the even bigger truth is that not everyone wears it on their sleeve. To be honest with you, I don’t look like half of the places I’ve been. I’ve got friends that have been through the brand of trauma that would probably render a weaker person unrecognizable but they continue to meet me for Sex and the City style lunch dates in expensive wedges and genuine leather Michael Kors bags. Not because they’ve desired to just robotically keep up appearances but because they’re strong and they just kept living the only way they knew how.

Everyone has been somewhere, everyone has been through something, and the reality is that these things change you. For some of us, that change is good. In my case, and I can only speak definitively about myself because I was there when everything happened, all of my unattractive, twisted trauma really molded me into the person that I am today. I won’t say that all of it was easy or that I haven’t mentally blocked a lot of things out. But honestly, enduring what I did at an impressionable age turned out to inspire a lot of drive in me. I became more focused, I became very aware of what I wanted in life and in my romantic relationships, and as someone recently pointed out to me, I quit taking shit from people.

Because quite frankly, I have taken enough to last a lifetime. And I don’t think that that’s ever something I need to apologize for.

I’m a better person for the turmoil I suffered and instead of feeling victimized and angry at all the people involved, I feel proud of myself for getting through it. I feel pleased at myself for making the necessary changes and I feel impressed at the way I whizzed through school while working (almost) full time and successfully completing an internship. I didn’t have any financial help because I didn’t come from rich parents or marry a wealthy husband, and I didn’t have any moral support through some of it but it made me toughen up. And I think it shows. I think I radiate survivor of domestic violence, woman who won’t take shit, and individual who commands respect every day of my life.

And you know what? I’m proud of it! Sometimes you’ve just got to quit worrying about what other people think of you and just consider yourself. Sometimes you’ve just got to be selfish because no one else is going to care about you. You’ve got to do that for yourself.

But because I’m still a kind person, because I still really value maintaining an incessantly positive attitude and being remembered for my pleasantry, I still get hurt sometimes. I have a tendency to really want to hear people out (#socialworkerproblems) and try to understand where they’re coming from. I always do this thing where I reverse the situation so that I can try and put myself in the other person’s shoes. How would I feel if my friend had made this particular comment to me? How would I feel if someone I know had suddenly canceled their plans with me after having a date set for weeks? What would I have to have been going through in order to lie almost pathologically to one of my dearest friends? How would I have reacted if I had been dealt the same things as this particular person?

I guess it’s just that in being assertive and not putting up with nonsense, you have to also remember that sometimes people just have a hard time. They get stuck in ruts, they have bad days, they get in fender benders that sets the tone for the week, and they can have moments where they really believe nothing will ever get better. Sometimes people need that second chance and sometimes people do change. But then again, sometimes they don’t.

It's all about balance, friends. It’s something that I’m really working on. Happy New Year to me. Sometimes being a people person, an advocate for general human rights and decency can be really stressful.

Anybody who says they’re a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they’re honest about everything. –Chuck Klosterman

But I find sometimes that a lot of people aren’t so honest. I’ve often thought that it has to do with the world we live in, a world run rampant on social media, a world absolutely dependent on instant gratification, a world where you don’t even have to leave your house to grocery shop. We live in a wild, somewhat antisocial, and relatively socially unacceptable time. People become shut ins because they literally don’t have to leave their house for anything (they even have virtual school now!), people suddenly don’t know how to communicate because we live in a world where you can just use an emoji to express how you feel, and people no longer know how to interact with each other because they just don’t have to anymore. It’s really, really sad.

I mean, blogging, for example. Who reads anymore? They don’t even teach children to write in cursive in third grade anymore! We’re raising a bunch of social media engrossed children who aren’t going to know how to properly formulate a signature! Or how to write a check!

Anyway, that’s not the point. Although, quite honestly, I could go on and on.

The point is that with all this social media nonsense, with all these applications like Microsoft Selfie (one of my personal favorites) and Instagram, you’re able to actually edit your photos as if they were airbrushed. There’s all these little tween “Instagram models” who post these photos in their undergarments with the hashtag “no filter” like they just woke up that gorgeous. I mean, if you’re encouraged to adulterate absolutely everything in your life, right down to some stupid selfie at Starbucks, why would you ever be honest with people? I mean, what is that teaching us? It’s okay to lie if it’s going on Instagram because obviously no one is going to post an intentionally unattractive selfie? I mean, let’s be real.

But all of this goes so much further than that. When I hear some of my single girlfriends talk about dating profiles and meeting people on the internet, that prospect really frightens me because how do you really know what you’re getting? Sure, we’ve all exaggerated a little bit. I always say I’m 5’3” but I’m more like 5’2” and a half. I always use the Microsoft Selfie application after a long day because I’m going to be real with you: I’m one hundred percent European and I’ve got nice, moist skin, if you catch my drift. (I’ll probably never get wrinkles…) I don’t always carry powder with me (because who in the hell actually does that?) so if I want to critique a picture with my best friend, I’m going to take that shine right off my forehead. And if I accidentally have a couple of chins in a particular photo, I’m going to retake that shit until it’s gone because I don’t need all of Facebook knowing the fact that I adore carbs.

All that information is kind of need to know.

But because of all this, because of this chronic mentality to stretch the truth and edit your photos to the point of looking like a Kardashian, it kind of makes you feel like you aren’t getting the real deal. And because our world is now so superficial, I find that quite frankly, there are a lot of seemingly gorgeous people who really have nothing else to offer. Because they’ve never had to. Because they’ve figured out contouring and push-up bras. Because they’ve somehow gotten lucky and gotten in with the right, lucrative crowd so they’ve never actually gone to school or had a real job in their life. Because they post one gym selfie that gives the impression they’re a gym rat when the reality is they’re using a waist trainer or just pushing their food around on their plate. (I hate that; I swear to god. I’m sorry, I’m German and Italian and I LOVE TO EAT. I will never be one of those girls because I just love food so much. It is what it is. Hey, it’s all about balance, right?)

I’m not being cynical, friends; this is the world we live in. And it’s terrifying.

And it kind of makes lying, forging, and exaggerating to the point of nonsense acceptable. This lack of character building, this tendency to make a personality non-existent, this chronic habit of encouraging people to be dishonest about a lot of things has made lying a suitable behavior. It kind of seems like if you’re really honest about certain things, people aren’t going to like you. If you don’t alter that photo to look like Ariana Grande, no one is going to swipe right. (And for the record, I had to Google which direction was correct if I wanted to imply that someone was attractive because I don’t really understand the Tinder app. It sounds like something that would really hurt my feelings but then again I’ve always been the type of person who got by on merit and personality.)

And so it’s crazy to me that everyone is all about women’s rights and fighting for what’s right. It’s like, in this world? Are you even kidding me? That’s never going to happen. And it’s not because I’m negative that I say that; it’s because that’s what has been instilled in all of us and it just keeps getting worse. A perfect example is the pressure that women feel to lose weight after giving birth. I can’t even tell you how many times people have said to me, “You only want to gain baby weight, no more than 20 pounds…” which I’m pretty sure is actually less than what’s recommended by doctors but whatever. It’s absolute nonsense. The pressure to look a certain way, the pressure to really fit in with the alleged norm is completely overwhelming.

The liar’s punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. –George Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism

But because lying has become such common nature, I feel like it has extended far beyond just superficial needs. Although people are probably going to always lie about little surface things like a former girlfriend allegedly choosing them over baseball mogul, Derek Jeter or the fact that they’ve sat on a plane next to Tina Fey, these things seem so miniscule to me. I mean, first of all, how would you ever fact check that? Unless you were actually there when the event occurred or happen to be abnormally close to Derek Jeter, you’re never going to be able to argue it. And with those kinds of things, it’s like who even cares? People make up nonsense lies like that as conversation starters or pathetic ways to get attention. These aren’t the brand of lies that really bug me although they are really tragic, if I’m being honest.

I once was dating a man (who was a profound pathological liar) who was running around telling all of his friends that my half-brother was a model and a contestant on the MTV show, Next. Listen, I had never even heard of that show or actually met my half-brother. So when this woman came to me asking about it, I just kind of crinkled my eyes at her because it was the dumbest thing I had heard all day. One time a guy told me that he was at some pizza joint with one of his ex-girlfriends and in walked James Gandolfini, who not only ordered a pizza, but apparently struck up this really crazy, long conversation with him. One time, I was told by the same gentleman that one of his clients was some crazy broad that was recently featured in the news for having a third implant bolted onto her chest. Another time, I was told by someone that I genuinely believed that he had met John Legend and that the only thing he took away from the meeting was how short he was in real life.

Honestly, all of those things were probably blatant, obnoxious lies that people just tell to get a little rise out of another person. Or who knows, maybe some of them weren’t. Maybe, although some of those things seemed absolutely ridiculous, they were accurate statements. They’re ludicrous and stupid, but they’re relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things. These nonsense lies that leads someone to puff up their chest with self-importance aren’t the ones that really bother me. It’s the ones that directly affect me that I have a real problem with.

What I don’t appreciate is when you find someone that you really care about, maybe even someone you love, and they lie to you about things that might seem tiny but are actually really gigantic when factored into your hypothetical relationship. I don’t like feeling like I’m incessantly questioning everything a person says, especially when I’m supposed to be in this close, bonded relationship with them. And I think that a lot times, people will get tripped by that whole “lies by omission” thing and I just want to set the record straight with that. Because I think it’s so important and I think that it’s something people use as a bargaining tool when they’re in trouble. And it’s nonsense.

For me personally, omitting is lying. You can go ahead and disagree if you want because some people are on that platform where they just “chose not to tell you”, so they therefore “haven’t officially lied”. Let me give you some perspective: Let’s say that you’re in a relationship with a guy and he’s cheating on you. Well, obviously if he’s cheating on you then he’s probably telling you proverbial lie after lie but let’s just pretend that he kept only that from you. He hasn’t actually had to lie to you because maybe your relationship isn’t really what it should be. Maybe he just stays out a little bit later and when he comes home well after he should, you don’t even ask where he’s been because maybe you just don’t give a shit.

Well let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that your cheating, lying by omission boyfriend, suddenly gets his side piece pregnant. Let’s say that she is prepared to come to you with this information because she’s about two seconds away from pulling a LeAnn Rimes and just jacking your man right out from under you altogether. So now you’re given all the information and you’re confronted with the reality of all of his lies and you’ve decided you have to talk things out with him.

Now tell me exactly what you would say to him if he heard you out and then said, “Babe, I never lied to you. I just didn’t tell you.” If any of you still have working phones in your hands, you’re LYING to yourselves. Just typing this makes me want to through my computer through the nest cubicle.

Here’s the thing about omission, friends: it’s an act of betrayal. Intentionally leaving things out of conversation with your partner (or your friend) because you are aware that the information would really hurt or aggravate the other person is dishonesty. Choosing not to be forthcoming and transparent about a serious situation that’s going on, something that is probably really affecting you, and therefore really affecting your relationship, is deceitful. Purposely keeping someone who’s allegedly really close to you on a need to know basis because you don’t want to further aggravate the strain in your relationship is untrustworthy. Every time I hear someone say the phrase, “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” I want to seriously crime on the person saying it. I don’t care what garbage excuse you devise for doing this; it’s hurtful and it’s the equivalent to just lying to my face.

I sometimes get so annoyed when I hear statements like that at work because I just don’t understand it. Secrecy, lies, and leaving really important bits out of conversation are all coupled together. They’re all living under the same roof. So when a client says, “I didn’t think I had to tell you that we were breaking the No Contact Order unless we actually got caught,” you can understand how difficult it is for me to stifle a groan. When a client, who is supposed to remain substance free, says that they had only one drink but passed their alcohol swab and therefore didn’t feel the need to come forward with the information, you can understand how much I want to do my Liz Lemon exaggerated eye-roll.

Something else that infuriates me is when people I see every day, people I work with, for example, make up stories about my behavior that threaten my character. I have encountered this scenario recently and I’ve got to say that I’m not really a fan of it. I think it’s one thing when people exaggerate or maybe even “over tell” stories a little bit to get a rise out of other people because honestly, that’s probably a pretty common thing. But to completely make up elaborate stories about another person is a totally different situation. And in this particular case, I think it just backfired on the woman who tried to do it to me because the stories she told were so wildly inaccurate, they weren’t even believable. Like, if you’re going to make up stories about me, at least try and stick to my personality. There’s just certain things that I would never engage in and I think a lot of people know that about me.

For example, I have this thing about close talkers. You know how sometimes people will get really close to you, either to intimidate you or sometimes just to be intimate, and they get like, right up in your face while they’re talking? I have never been a fan of that. Blame it on my insecurities or the fact that I’ve always liked personal space but I hate when people do that. I don’t even like when a person is trying to speak quietly so they move in close to eliminate sound travel. I have one girlfriend who communicates this way because she’s just a kind person and I think it’s her way of communicating more intimately. But every time she does it to me, I always lean back on one foot because it makes me uncomfortable. I love her to death but it wigs me out.

So naturally, when someone claims that I got “right up in their face” to make a statement (probably a derogatory one, given the way she whined about it), I almost want to laugh at the ridiculousness. Because I would NEVER do that. It’s like I always tease my husband, “If you’re going to quote me, do it right.” And if you’re going to cause problems and take hits at my character, at least make up stories about things I actually partake in.

Like gossiping around the water cooler.

Moral of the Crazy: Honestly, I know everyone’s lied before at some point in their lifetime. I can’t sit here and say that I’ve never lied to anyone ever because well, that would be a lie. The difference between people like me and people who just lie like it’s their full time job is that I don’t enjoy it and I don’t make a habit of it. I don’t make up lies to better my social or employment position and I don’t lie to people that I care about.

We’ve all lied to get out of plans, get out of work, and get out of school but those are the things that are seemingly harmless. Those are the things that aren’t really hurting people. Although with today’s day and age, and everyone’s likelihood to check into Facebook or Instagram like it’s their other full time job, people can get their feelings hurt if you say you’re home sick but your geotag says otherwise.

I just am unpleasantly surprised by how commonplace lying seems to be. I mean, it literally makes me crazy because I just don’t understand the motivation! I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like I’m surrounded by it. I haven’t encountered it in my own relationship, but I see it all the time at work, as well as with my girlfriends and their relationships. Just as an example, I’m friends with this one really awesome woman who used to date this inattentive man child. Sure, he was always lying to her because he always had other things going on in the romantic department. I mean, realistically, there is no way he could have been honest with her because she would have been out the door!

There was one time when I was out with her and she kept begging her idiot boyfriend to come out with us. (And don’t misunderstand, it wasn’t in a pathetic way. She just was like, “Come on, don’t be antisocial. Come out with us and quite being lame.”) He claimed to be tired, that he had to work early in the morning and that he really just wanted to stay home and relax.

Go ahead and take a guess what he was actually doing. Three bars down from the one we were at. Tired, my ass.

And what I don’t understand about this kind of behavior, this kind of chronic, pathological lying, is that you know at some point someone is going to find out. Especially in the case with my ex-boyfriend. I mean, Port Richey is such a small town. There’s only a handful of decent restaurants in that godforsaken town I grew up in. Don’t you think that you’re going to know at least one person no matter which one you choose? Don’t you think that the chances of bumping into someone you know are pretty goddamn high considering there’s only one high school in the area and only about two places that serve alcohol after midnight? Don’t you think that all of those people that you’re probably going to bump into have nothing better to do in that garbage town than to text the person your cheating on to alert them of where you’re really at?

I mean, let’s be real: Port Richey is like LA without with money. And the paparazzi. You’re not going to go anywhere without everyone knowing about it. I still encounter that to this day! And I haven’t lived there in years!

But obviously he couldn’t have told me, “Hey listen, I’m going out to someone’s birthday dinner because I want to hook up with my ex-girlfriend,” because I probably would have gone on a borderline anorexic, low blood sugar rage. So instead he said, “Hey listen, I’m moonlighting on an undercover mission with the police department,” (even though he was a firefighter).

Narc mission, my ass. I swear to goodness, friends. The lies that I have heard from the variety of individuals I’ve been acquainted with would just astound you. I could write a really interesting book about it.

Here’s the takeaway from all of this: the thing about lying is that it takes away a lot of your value. I mean, I don’t know about you, but when I catch people in lies, even if they’re really tiny and unimportant, I never really look at the person the same way again. And from then on, they’ve just hexed themselves because they could say today is Wednesday and I’m not going to believe them. And I’m not going to believe them purely because I caught them in a lie once. And honestly, it’s really sad because sometimes people just get desperate, or they exaggerate because they want the spotlight on them, or they think that the information is buried so deep, I’ll never find out about it. (Little do they know that I’m what you would call a digger. I don’t take information at face value. I check everything I can because I don’t like being in the dark with things. Something about my anxiety is soothed by accurate knowledge.)

Obviously, being lied to is terrible. But I think dealing with the repercussions and embarrassment of being confronted or never taken seriously again is even worse. Let this be a lesson to all of you: lying isn’t cute. Not when it’s something small like your age or your bra size and not when it’s something large and impactful, like the extracurricular activities affecting your relationship.

I guess it’s safe to say that in considering these things, you want to think about yourself and how you would want to be treated. Personally, I would want the truth. Even if it hurts my feelings sometimes.

And I don’t know about you all, but I don’t really want any of my pants to set on fire. They’re way too expensive to replace.

No one believes a liar. Even when she’s telling the truth. –Sara Shepard, Heartless

Follow me at my twitter page @thatcrzk8 for more updates and rants about my neurotic abnormalities and celebrity obsessions. Be sure to subscribe to my up and coming YouTube channel to stay up to date on the things that grind my gears, specials about domestic violence awareness, and reasons I love my South African, jerky making husband! More videos to come soon!