pathological liar illness — 1 explainer, sort of

the apartment is lit by one bulb and the assumption that no one is coming over. pathological liar illness, the article wants to call it. cereal is soup with rules. wellness is borrowed language and i do not have it on loan. the third yoga mat, rolled, agrees in silence. silence is also, technically, a treatment.

writing this from the desk, 9:14am on a wednesday, with carla parked in the all-hands one floor up and forty minutes of cover before someone needs my pretend opinion on a pretend chart. i’m here now. i was at the kitchen counter last night, when the search bar suggested the phrase to me like a waiter pushing the special.

so the desk gets the explainer. the kitchen counter gets the credit for the evidence.

1. pathological liar illness, the at-home steps

let me say what the search bar will not. pathological liar illness is what people type when they suspect someone in their life is lying in a way that goes beyond ordinary lying, and they want a doctor to weigh in without having to call a doctor. so they ask the box. the box returns five articles with stock photos of foreheads. one of those articles will use the word “illness” because “illness” tests well.

i have read enough of the genre to nod along. the genre is built on a borrowed term. for what compulsive lying actually looks like at street level, see the older write-up on the liar as a domestic species. the genre is also built on the assumption you will keep reading, which is a kind of lie too, only legal.

at-home steps, then. five of them. all of them are about the schedule, not the soul. the schedule is what i can audit from a desk. the soul is upstairs in the all-hands.

2. step one, accept the borrowed term

“illness” comes from wellness. wellness is a marketing department. accept that the word arrived in the search bar through a side door, smelling faintly of essential oils. for a sober look at where the word actually came from, the etymology entry on etymonline is short, free, and not trying to sell you a candle.

once you accept the borrowed term, you stop expecting it to behave like a real one. real terms come with thermometers. borrowed terms come with checklists. the checklist is the product. the product is your time. the time is what i am supposed to be giving the spreadsheet on the second monitor right now.

jim carrey did a film about a lawyer who could not lie for a day. it is called Liar Liar, and it is the only credible at-home test for pathological liar illness i am willing to endorse. set a 24-hour timer. tell only the boring truth. observe the wreckage.

3. step two, audit the unopened mail pile

here is what the wellness sites do not tell you. the unopened mail pile is the most honest object on the kitchen counter. it knows what i owe. it knows who is asking. it sits on the kitchen counter behaving like a small flat reasonable monument to the things i have decided not to know yet.

step two is to look at the mail pile for ninety seconds without touching it. count the windowed envelopes. count the colored ones. note which company writes in serif and which writes in sans. the serif ones are more serious than the sans ones, by a margin i cannot prove, but i’m fairly sure there is a study somewhere, possibly in a serious magazine.

auditing is not opening. opening is for thursdays. auditing is for the mornings carla is in a meeting and i have a coffee that is still hot.

4. step three, consider the certified letter drawer

somewhere underneath the kitchen drawer with the takeout menus is a smaller drawer. inside the smaller drawer are the certified letters. they are certified because someone wanted a paper trail. i have provided the paper. they have the trail. this is, in its way, a contract i did not have to sign.

step three is to consider the drawer. consideration here means: notice it exists. do not open the drawer. do not count the letters. consideration is a posture, not a project. wellness influencers will tell you to “face” the drawer. i am facing it. i am facing it from across the room. the room is small. the facing is constant. nobody is being avoided. everybody is being acknowledged. this is the at-home equivalent of treatment.

5. step four, decline the appointment cleanly

somewhere in the inbox there is an appointment that wants to be made. it is from a portal. the portal has a logo that looks like a leaf. the appointment is for a thing the portal believes will improve me. the portal is wrong, but it is wrong politely, so i feel the obligation of replying.

step four is to decline. decline once. decline cleanly. decline without explaining. the word for the kind of decline i am describing is a single word: “no.” the box at the bottom of the portal email asks for feedback on why. leave the box empty. the box will survive.

declining cleanly is not declining rudely. there is a difference and the difference is one paragraph of unnecessary apology that you do not write. i have spent years writing that paragraph. the paragraph helped no one and accidentally extended the appointment by two follow-ups. the new method saves me a tuesday.

6. step five, eat the cereal, ignore the rules

the at-home portion concludes in the kitchen. cereal is soup with rules. eat the cereal. ignore the rules. the rules are: not after 11am, not before bed, not in the dark, not from the box. the box is a perfectly serviceable bowl with engineered structural integrity. the rules are a class war i refuse to fight.

the seventh microwave hums in agreement. it has not killed me yet, which is more than the wellness sites can promise about their candles. the microwave is the seventh because the previous six made decisions i did not endorse. each one taught me something, and what they taught was: do not put a fork in. that lesson covers the entire field of pathological liar illness, if you squint.

7. verdict, the illness is the schedule

understanding a pathological liar, in the version the wellness sites sell, is meant to take eight weeks of weekly journaling. understanding a pathological liar, in the version i am offering free of charge from the desk, takes one wednesday morning and a willingness to look at the mail pile from across a room.

the telltale signs of a pathological liar are not in the lying. they are in the schedule of the lying — the rhythm, the recurrence, the way it lines up with the certified letter drawer and the appointments declined and the mornings the all-hands runs long. the illness is the schedule. the schedule is mine. ignorance is, in this case, financial therapy.

that is the at-home explainer. the term is borrowed. the steps are scheduling. the schedule is the diagnosis. the cereal, finally, is in the bowl.

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