Note: this was written last Sunday and I didn't intend to publish it, I'll explain at the bottom why I did.

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I told a lie today.

I was supposed to go to church with a client and his family to hear a youth pastor from Texas speak, but I played hooky and slept in until noon instead.  I woke up early and phoned the client's house, mumbled some feeble story about a family emergency, then decided to sleep until my guilt subsided.  There was a lot of guilt, and thus I partook in a lot of sleep.  I suppose I ought to explain why I would feel so much guilt over something as common as playing hooky from work, but first let me explain why I chose to skip work.

You see, I had known about this adventure in churchiness (if Shakespeare could make up words, why can't I?) for quite some time prior to this morning, and -- believe it or not -- I was actually looking forward to it!  In fact, I was even planning on taking a notepad and jotting down thoughts throughout the sermon for the benefit of you good people who read this.  However, at about 4am this morning I woke up in a cold sweat, panicking about some unknown problem looming on the horizon.

I went through all of the current issues in my life that may have been causing this attack of anxiety (perhaps they should call this phenomenon an anxiety attack?) one-by-one to try and determine what the root (if any) of it was.
Money? No, I'm doing alright.
Rumours? No, I'm not in high school anymore.
Girls? No, I'm a straight up OG []D [] []V[] []D

I was about ready to just chalk it up to another rootless panic attack and focus on my day when... my day.  Work.  Church.  Judging eyes.  What do I wear?  What if they know I'm not Christian?  What if they pour holy water on me? AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHHH!  Well, that was it! I was anxious about going to church in the morning.  So, rather than "manning up" and facing a day at church, I picked up the phone and lied my way out of it.


The Point

As I stated earlier in this entry, the guilt I felt over that "little white lie" ate me up all day, forcing me into my second-favourite avoidance tactic: sleep.  Some may wonder why I would let a victimless fib affect me to the extent that it did, and explaining that is the real reason I am writing this entry (although at this time I do not think I will be publishing it, because I feel as though it is ill-formatted and poorly written, but if you are reading this then I did decide to publish it... so hello friends, welcome to my B-material).  You see, I used to be a liar.

Once upon a time, I was as dishonest a person as you could have ever encountered.  My lying as a child bordered on pathological, because at times I would tell a lie where the truth would easily have been better.  The constant lies followed me into high school, but they stopped sometime prior to grade ten.  (Psych101dan would like to suggest that the lying came from my inherent need to impress, quite possibly stemming from the ludicrous amount of pressure my parents placed on me from a very early age.  He would also like to note that I have had confidence issues my whole life, and clearly I did not think that I would be impressive to people without my fantastic stories.  I really hate psych101dan.)

I stopped making up random stories and lying pathologically around the time I started hanging out with the guys from Woodville, with whom I connected (in a completely non-gay way) instantly, and never had to lie about myself to fit in with them.  However, that doesn't mean I became an honest person.

I was sneaky, I was manipulative, I was conniving, I was such a slimy person that it lead to the following (paraphrased) exchange between myself and a work associate, with whom I sold paint door-to-door in grade 12:

Him: So [boss] told me to keep a close eye on you today, and review all your closes before submission.
Dan: Huh?  Why?
Him: Well, to be honest, he basically said you're a shyster and that he doesn't trust you.


Even worse is that I didn't take it as an insult, but rather I felt a twinge of real pride that someone thought I was a "shyster".  It was at around this time that I was using these sneaky tactics to control and manipulate a girlfriend, and I viewed most people around me as intellectually inferior, therefore making them nothing more than tools for me to use to meet my own ends.  However, as most things tend to do in life, this attitude towards people eventually came back to bite me.

At the risk of coming across as melodramatic, I'd like to use the of-repeated metaphor of a carefully constructed tapestry unraveling.  All of my lies and sneaky maneuvers came to light, and my reputation was in tatters.  You'd think that would have been enough to scare me away from dishonesty, but it wasn't.  In fact, I redoubled my efforts as a liar to try and worm my way out of the fast-approaching repercussions from my previous lies.  That tactic, of course, just managed to ruin my reputation further.

At that point, I was known as a liar to most, so when the pack actually attacked, nobody came when I cried wolf.  By which, of course, I mean that I'd lied so much in the past, when I needed people to believe me, they had no reason to.  Very little feelings are worse than that of being called a liar when you are telling the truth, and I decided at that point that my reputation needed repairing.  Ever since then I have been honest to a fault, and expect complete honesty from those close to me.  I can allow a little fib now and then (for example, lying to keep someone in the dark about an upcoming surprise party in their honour is acceptable), but overall I pride myself on being honest.   Some may say brutally honest at times.

As Dr. House says, everybody lies.  From time-to-time I still find it easier to lie than to tell the truth, and have to force myself into honesty, or suffer the self-inflicted consequence of gnawing, agonizing guilt.  So, I'm not honest because I am a particularly good person, I just believe the pros of honesty outweigh the cons.
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Note: The reason I decided to publish this draft is because I hadn't published anything in a while.  This has been sitting here in draft form for a week, but I just am not satisfied with it because I feel as though it comes across as very pointless and "livejournally".  I was going to publish something new on Wednesday, after I took notes during a sermon at a church function I had to attend with work, but I have since attended and noted another sermon which I am going to include in the entry entitled "church", so until I transcribe my notes, this will have to do.  I apologize, perhaps I shall write you all a poem tomorrow.