STOP LYING TO YOURSELF FOR BETTER MENTAL HEALTH

A request to stop lying to yourself is to stop believing what you know isn’t true.

It goes beyond the private lies we enjoy telling ourselves.

How long is that list? Too long to add anyone else’s baloney because we’re already loaded.

Body Shaming Lie: My dryer is shrinking my clothes, I’m not fat.

Hair Color Lie: I don’t dye my hair. This is natural.

Aging Lie: I don’t look my age.

That no one cares how fat you are, what color your hair is, or how old you are is a shock to learn. But they do care that you understand a shared reality.

Like science, a shared reality whether we believe it or not. Here’s a test:

Hold a chunk of ice in your hand until it melts and you can’t feel your hand. It happens the same with will all warm blooded people, and science explains the phenomenon.

It’s called temperature and you lowered it in your hand with ice.

Do the heat test:

Strike a wooden match with the thumbnail of one hand. Just flick your nail over the top and watch the flame. Hold it under your hand as long as you can stand the heat.

That’s one way to burn yourself with a stick match.

The other way is flicking the match head too hard and the flame-up includes the chunk of match head under your thumbnail.

That pain is a result of chemical reactions, which science can explain.

Stop lying when you notice who it hurts besides you

I was raised in a family used to hearing kids lie about things kid lie about. It started early.

“Did you brush your teeth?”

“Yes.”

“No you didn’t. Brush your teeth.”

How did they know? I learned later they checked tooth brushes for dampness. I used the same tactic with my own kids later.

Toward the end of grade school I got this:

“Where did the notebook in your coat pocket come from?”

“A friend gave it to me,” I lied.

“Which friend?”

I didn’t want to tell my parents that a friend of the family had a son who started a delinquent club that required shoplifting for membership.

The small notebook went from a shelf in the Pony Village Payless to my pocket to room where my mom hung my coat up as an excuse to rifle through the pockets.

My parents were crime busters. Dad was an insurance adjuster listening to dubious stories all day long; my mom worked for the DMV where she helped bust car thieves trying to register stolen vehicles. I was no match for them.

I gave the name of the ring leader and my dad called their dad. My dad listened for a moment, then handed me the phone. The other dad had laid his phone down to scream at his son about the notebook, then I heard the kid crying when his dad added hands.

I started crying and confessed; my parents figured out what to do. My first thought was I’d earned the same ass-kicking the other kid got, but it turned out differently.

My dad drove me down to Pony Village and told the manager of Payless my fate was in his hands. The man banned me from his store. I went to Jantzen Music the next day and bought a forty five of the Bobby Fuller Four singing I Fought The Law And The Law Won.

When my dad heard the song he said I was banned from the entire mall, not just Payless. He was not amused. The ass kicking came later.

Where Were You? Tell The Truth

A few short years later I was still banned from hanging out in the mall, but I had company. A girl. The cutest girl in town and she liked me.

It was an Oregon coast summer with night baseball games on the local diamond. Older couples, ninth graders, turned into baseball fans when they met up and cuddled under blankets.

The grandstands were a better hangout than the mall to learn the moves, so I was a regular and took notes: Blanket. Baseball. Babes.

One afternoon I stretched the trust a little too far. The folks knew I ‘loved baseball’ so if I disappeared they’d think “He’s at a game.”

I came back around ten, late for an eighth grade summer, and they were up waiting.

Where was I? Either at a baseball game, or hugging it out with the cutest girl.

I said baseball, they said check-in next time and come home earlier. The cute girl said her parents were going out next Saturday night and letting their older kids have a party.

That Saturday I didn’t check-in when I snuck out. My dad’s car was gone when I got home around midnight.

The party warped time and space then and still gives it a shake today. It feels like it was the first time my celebrity crush feelings were put to the test.

The varsity was there, guys I didn’t know but saw do heroic things on the football field and basketball court. They were in the sports page all the time and I was a fan. I was also a big fan of the varsity cheerleaders there. To a kid they were all celebrities in the flesh.

I fell into a daze while the night played out. By the time I snapped out of it, it was near midnight, and I started running.

Even as a youngster I knew the police picked up kids out after curfew. My dad scheduled tours of the police department and jail with his buddy the chief so we all understood the law.

Police, or not, I dodged headlights on the way home. The old man’s car was gone. My mom sat on the far end of the couch when I walked in the front door, a lamp in the corner giving dramatic lighting.

“Wait until your father gets home,” she said with quiet effort. Her other voice was the one you hear above the others at football games.

Car lights flashed in the front window when he pulled up on cue.

I watched him open the door, look at my mom giving hand signals, then push me up against the hallway wall. His face was so close I felt his moist cigarette breath.

A few pointed questions, a few open palms to the face, and we were good.

“Where were you?”

“At the ballpark.”

“No you weren’t. Where were you?”

“At the ballpark.”

“You’re lying.”

A Smack To Stop Lying

I’d been hit in the face harder playing backyard football, but I didn’t say that while I stuck to the story under duress.

We went through the same drill two more times; I didn’t break, the old man didn’t want to beat me down, so we stared at each other until he stepped away.

The next afternoon I snuck away for the third time to the same place. On the way home I rolled in mud puddles and dirt, making up a story about getting chased through the Newmark swamp by Coos Bay punks.

I dodged headlights all the way home, and the old man’s car was gone. Again. He was out looking for me both nights and I couldn’t be found. I knew the sneaker trail better than him.

My mom sat on the far end of the couch under the lamp, glaring at me. I was filthy and fake-huffing deep breaths after escaping the Pirate gang. I rested a dirty hand on the wall where she could see it.

She was so boiling mad she didn’t complain.

My dad’s headlights flashed through the front window as he pulled into the driveway. Looking back, he showed up soon after I did, like he was following me. The old tracker.

He came in, looked at mom, looked at me dripping on the shag carpet.

No Smack To Stop Lying

We looked at each other, my big defiant face and some new badass expression I’d never seen on his. I know what it is now, after the Army.

My dad was a Marine SSGT with a Silver Star and Purple Heart in Korea. He drilled war, drilled troops, and ran the brig on an aircraft carrier. That’s the man in my face.

The face he showed was ‘I’ve been where you don’t want to go, so don’t take us there.’

It was scary in ways I didn’t know then.

“Where have you been?”

“Running from Marshfield guys who called me a pussy.”

“He’s lying,” mom said from the couch.

“What did you do?”

“I yelled back. Four of them. In a car. Ran through the Newmark swamp to get away. They looked older.”

I didn’t say I ran through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn’t go, but that was the idea I took from Johnny Horton’s Greatest Hits.

“He’s lying.”

I waited for it, the slap, the chop, the knockout shot, because this was the right time to beat some sense into a teenager.

Right?

A STOP LYING MOMENT FOR BETTER MENTAL HEALTH

My dad nodded his head at me with his chin down, holding eye contact like a pro, and called back to her from the hallway, “I believe him.”

“He’s lying.”

“I said I believe him,” dad said, still nodding and not blinking.

“He’s lying and you know it.”

We all knew it.

The old man raised his eyebrows, tilted his head, and said, “I believe him.

And stepped back.

“He’s lying. Why don’t you do something?”

“I have,” he said, nodding right at me, looking straight at me until I started nodding, too.

“He’s lying.”

“I believe him,” my dad said while we stood nodding together. “Get changed and clean up this mess.”

He moved over to the front room opening, nodding slowly toward the end of the couch.

“I believe he will stop lying now.”