I Am Not A Liar

I am not a liar.

But for a long time, I was treated like one.

And if someone questions your reality enough, eventually you start questioning it too.

People think lying is always about being sneaky.

About manipulation.
About bad character.
About enjoying deception.

Sometimes it is.

But sometimes lying is what happens when honesty becomes exhausting.

Sometimes it is what happens when harmless truths keep turning into full productions.

Because in some relationships, even normal life stops being normal.

If I missed a call because I was in the shower, I knew how it would go.
“Oh I’m sure you were.”

If I said I’d gone to the shops:
“Yeah sure you did.”

If I answered too quickly:
“What were you doing on the phone?”

If I answered too slowly:
“Who were you with?”

If I said I was just watching TV:
“Yeah sure you are.”

If I picked up a shift at work:
“I’m sure you did.”

If I sounded happy:
Who was I talking to?

If I sounded flat:
Why was I being rude?

If I breathed near another human male:
Probably suspicious too.

No answer was safe.

Too quick was suspicious.
Too slow was suspicious.
Too calm was suspicious.
Too cheerful was suspicious.
Too tired was suspicious.

Truth was never really the point.

The point was doubt.

The point was having me explain myself.

The point was keeping me in a position where I was always defending something.

So after a while, you stop wanting to explain innocent things.

Not because you’re guilty.

Because you’re tired.

Because you know something tiny will become a three-hour emotional documentary.

Because honesty starts feeling less like honesty and more like volunteering for humiliation.

So sometimes I lied.

Sometimes I softened things.

Sometimes I left details out.

Sometimes I said whatever would create the smallest explosion.

Not because I was running some glamorous secret double life.

Because I couldn’t mentally survive another cross-examination about Woolworths.

That is the part people often miss.

Sometimes people lie because they’re hiding betrayal.

Sometimes people lie because they’re hiding from punishment.

There is a difference.



When I tried to explain it

There were times I tried to be honest about the bigger truth.

I would tell him I felt like I avoided telling the truth because I was scared of his reaction.

Not as an attack.
Not to blame him.
Not to dodge responsibility.

Just trying to explain how it felt for me.

Trying to say:

I don’t think I’m lying because I’m evil.
I think I’m lying because I’m anxious.

But that conversation never really existed for long.

Because straight away it would become:

So now this is my fault?
You’re turning it around on me.
You’re blaming me for your lies.

And suddenly I was comforting the person I had just tried to be honest with.

That’s another exhausting part of these dynamics.

You come forward with vulnerability and somehow leave carrying more guilt than when you arrived.

You explain fear and get accused of manipulation.

You name the pattern and become the problem.

After enough of that, you stop opening up too.

Not because you have nothing to say.

Because being honest about your feelings somehow becomes another crime scene.

The lies I hated most

The hardest lies were not the ones told to him.

They were the ones told to people who actually loved me.

My family.

My friends.

Saying I wasn’t talking to him again when I was.

Pretending I wasn’t seeing him.

Acting like I was over it.

Making excuses for why I looked drained.

Hiding where I was going.

Hiding who I was with.

Hiding that I had gone back again.

That shame hits differently.

Because now you are not only being called dishonest by the person hurting you,

you are becoming dishonest with the people trying to help you.

Not because you’re malicious.

Because you’re embarrassed.

Because you said you were done.

Because you don’t know how to explain why you still love someone making your life worse.

Because trauma is hard to package neatly over coffee.

So you hide it.

Then hate yourself for hiding it.

Then feel even more trapped.


When friends get it wrong

People like to say, real friends tell you the truth.

And sometimes they do.

Sometimes they save you.

Sometimes they hold your hand through hell.

And sometimes they get it badly wrong.

One of the hardest parts of that time was realising not everyone knows how to support someone in a toxic relationship.

Some people get frustrated.

Some people become judgemental.

Some people think if you’re still there, you must be choosing it.

Some people start listening to the loudest voice in the room.

And abusive people are often very loud.

I had a friend who ended up getting pulled into it.

The same friends he once wanted me to cut off, by the way.

Funny how isolation and information gathering can somehow coexist.

At one point he was messaging her for information.

Later, after we had started talking again, he saw on Instagram that I had gone to a car event.

He asked who I went with.

And I already knew where his mind would go.

So to keep the peace, I said I had gone with a girl too.

That girl being the friend who was meant to be my best friend.

She then sent him receipts proving I wasn’t there with her.

Which is… one way to support a woman in obvious distress.

And even now, what strikes me most is not the betrayal.

It’s that nobody stopped to ask:

Why would she feel the need to lie about something so harmless?

Why would saying I went to a car event need witness statements?

Why is the issue her lie, and not the environment creating it?

That’s what people often miss.

They focus on the symptom.

Not the system.


Sometimes survival looks ugly

When people imagine coping, they imagine bravery.

Clear boundaries.

Strong speeches.

Walking away with dignity and hydrated skin.

Sometimes coping looks much uglier than that.

Sometimes it looks like lying about where you went because you can’t do another fight.

Sometimes it looks like deleting friends because their involvement is making things worse.

Sometimes it looks like becoming secretive because openness keeps hurting you.

I ended up cutting that friend out.

Not out of power.

Out of survival.

Because I did not have enough energy to manage him and someone else helping him misunderstand me.

That season of my life required reduction.

Less chaos.

Less explaining.

Less people inside something they didn’t understand.


I am not a liar

I did lie sometimes.

That part is true.

But I was not a liar.

A liar uses deception as identity.

As strategy.
As control.

What I was doing was adapting inside pressure.

Trying to avoid scenes.
Trying to avoid shame.
Trying to avoid guilt.
Trying to protect tiny scraps of peace in a life that had very little of it.

That matters.

Because language matters.

There is a difference between manipulation and self-protection.

There is a difference between dishonesty and distress.

There is a difference between character and coping.


If this is you

If you have ever hidden harmless things because the truth felt harder…

If you have ever lied to avoid someone’s reaction rather than because you were doing wrong…

If you have ever felt ashamed for becoming secretive in a relationship built on suspicion…

If friends judged you while missing the bigger picture…

You are not alone.

And you are not automatically the villain because your coping became messy.

Sometimes people do strange things in strange environments.

That does not mean the environment was healthy.


Final thoughts

I am not a liar.

I was someone who learned that ordinary truths could become weapons in the wrong hands.

I was someone who got tired of defending normal life.

I was someone who became smaller, quieter, and more secretive trying to survive something emotionally crooked.

And if you have ever been labelled by the ways you coped, rather than understood for what you were coping with

maybe the label was never the truth.

Maybe it was just the bruise.