cure for compulsive lying — 1 explainer, sort of

the supermarket has a new shelf for what they call wellness. cure for compulsive lying, the article promised, in three weeks. mondays are better than fridays. the microwave at home is the only appliance that has never asked a follow-up question. i bought soup. i told the cashier i was good. neither of us flinched.

back at the desk now, 9:47am on a saturday, with the magazine still in the bag and carla upstairs in some training thing on the third floor. i have until lunch. that is a fact i can verify. the rest of what follows, i’ll do my best.

cure for compulsive lying, the working table (~260)

here is the table. i made it from the four things the article said were cures, which is generous, and the four things i actually tried, which is a smaller number. the column for “did it work” is the column where i started lying again, which is on-brand for the topic.

the table is a small, mean object. a comparative grid for fixing a thing the grid cannot describe. i found it useful in the way a spoon is useful for digging a hole — it makes the activity clearer without making it any faster. for the longer history of the diagnosis i keep landing on, the working manual on what makes someone a liar is where i started, and where i return when the menu gets too long.

cure one, journaling, which i did for two days (~260)

the first cure for compulsive lying on the magazine’s list was journaling. write the truth, every morning, for thirty days. i bought a notebook at the supermarket on the same trip as the soup. it had a cream cover and a band. i spent extra on the band. that was the most honest part of the project.

day one i wrote: “i did not want to come to work today.” day two i wrote: “i told the cashier i was good.” day three the notebook was on the kitchen counter, next to the third yoga mat which had migrated there from under the couch because i was trying to give the impression that the yoga mat was about to get used. the journal joined it. a small library of things that imply a habit.

the issue is not that i did not write. the issue is that the writing rewarded me for the lie. the page absorbs anything. it does not flinch either. you can write “i am working on it” and the page agrees. paper is a worse mirror than a cashier.

somewhere on a podcast i half-listened to, a man recommended journaling alongside reading a russian novel he could not pronounce, which i’ll grant is an aesthetic. i looked at the screen adaptation of the prince myshkin one instead. it is two and a half hours of a kind man being slowly destroyed by everyone he meets. it is a better cure for compulsive lying than the journal, and it was free with the subscription i forgot to cancel.

cure two, therapy, which i declined politely (~260)

the second cure for compulsive lying is therapy. proper therapy. a person with a degree and a chair that swivels and a clock placed where only they can see it. the magazine treated this as if anyone can just walk into one. the magazine has not seen my bank app, which i don’t open.

i looked up therapists near me on the phone, in a private window, the way you look up things you intend not to do. i found three. one had a waiting list. one took a kind of insurance i do not have. one had a website with a quote at the top that said something like “the truth will set you free” in a font i did not respect. i closed the window. i felt cured for about eleven seconds.

the supermarket sells what they call wellness in a shelf. they do not sell therapy in a shelf. there is a reason. a shelf cannot ask a follow-up question. neither can my microwave, which is the seventh i have killed and the only one in the kitchen that has ever met me without judgement. between the shelf and the man with the swivel chair, i picked the shelf. the magazine cost less than the copay. the soup, less still.

i am aware of how that sounds. i’ll be the judge of what’s relevant in my own post.

cure three, accountability, which is what dave is for (~260)

the third cure for compulsive lying is what the wellness people call accountability. tell one person. preferably a friend who will not flinch. i told dave on a tuesday. he was at his desk, in his car, somewhere with bad signal. “i think i lie too much,” i said. there was a pause. then he laughed for a long time. i did not time it. it was long enough that i picked up the kettle and put it down again.

“about what,” he said, eventually.

“about whether i am working on a thing.”

“that’s not lying,” he said. “that’s having a job.”

this is what dave is for. dave converts diagnoses into routines. it is more useful than a journal because dave answers back. the journal does not say “that’s having a job.” the journal says nothing. nothing is, at best, neutral, and neutrality is the soil that lying grows in.

stefan, the wine guy at the corner shop, gave me his version a week later, unsolicited, which is the only register stefan has. “you don’t lie,” he said, pouring something from a bottle he was not selling, “you postpone.” i thought about that for the rest of the afternoon. postponing is not curable. postponing is a relationship with time. i went home and added stefan to the table mentally as a footnote, because he did not ask for one and he should be one.

cure four, ignoring the question, which has worked so far (~260)

the fourth cure for compulsive lying is the one that sounds wrong because it works. ignore the question. the magazine called this “boundary work.” it is not boundary work. it is just not answering. when the cashier asks how you are, the lie begins because the question requires a sentence. eliminate the sentence and the lie cannot board the train.

i have been practicing. someone at the office asked if i’d seen the doc. i said “i’ll get to it.” that is not a lie. that is also not an answer. there is a thin line between deflection and dishonesty and the line is the word “yet.” add “yet” and you are managing expectations. omit it and you are a person with a problem.

this is the cheapest cure on the table. it requires no notebook, no swivel chair, no friend. it requires the willingness to be slightly rude to a magazine. i find that comes easily.

verdict, the cure is just a routine with marketing (~230)

the verdict on the magazine, on the shelf, on the four cures and the one that nearly worked: the cure for compulsive lying is the routine you can stand. journaling is a routine you can stand if you like notebooks. therapy is a routine you can stand if you can pay. accountability is a routine you can stand if dave answers his phone, which is a different kind of probability.

ignoring the question is the routine i can stand. it costs nothing. it does not require a band on a notebook. it does not require a person with a clock placed where only they can see it. it requires a kind of mild rudeness aimed at small talk, which is a tax i was already paying in resentment.

the magazine is now on the unopened mail pile, on top of the bills, which is itself a kind of cure. cure five: bury the diagnosis under things that cost more than the diagnosis. write that down. or don’t. you don’t owe the page an answer either.

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