lies
I suppose that there are many different types.
there is the lie I tell when I say I am 24, when I mean that this is my twenty-fourth year on this planet and soon I will be entering another.
there are lies we tell children, those 'harmless' ones. cultural tales and legends and tricks to get them to behave a certain way.
there is the lie of one who has fallen out of love - repeating words with lost meaning, no effort, and in avoidance of honesty with themselves.
there's the lie of the deceiver, an intentional misleading. who they are, what they want from you, who they are willing to take down to get it.
and then there is a different kind of lie - the kind that comes from fear. and while sometimes it's well intentioned, it's the one that stings the most. it takes many, many forms.
somehow they always pick the lie that crosses every category. they tell me the same words in different ways. and usually, they mean to comfort, but they don't know quite how, and they don't have the answers. fear does many things.
so yes. there are many different lies. but there are only a few that pierce straight to my soul. so don't tell me that I will be okay just because you do not have the answers. i have sought out my future in the vitality of those who have lived through what I have. and it helped with the trauma. it helped me through the abuse. it helps me survive nights of PTSD flashbacks and harm to myself where I struggle to remember why I am still here, where I fight voices in my head that repeat the words drilled into my being since birth, that prevented my worth from ever growing, that destroyed any semblance of self that ever began to sprout green life from concrete and gravel with hatred and hunger and glee.
but there is no vitality of those with my letters, my labels, my illnesses, far up ahead, in my current progression. my clinical profile identical to those in their 30s and 40s - what's that mean for me? No one can say. It's anyone's guess, anyone's game. I'm not sure it's a game that I'd quite like to play. So no, do not lie to me. Don't tell me that I'm going to be okay; grant me that one kindness. They number only few, those from whom these words and this comfort accepted.