Who then is telling the truth?
This question haunts me still, even after learning how “malicious lies can wound” in my free speech class. But the real education came from living it.
I remember the pathological liar who taught me my first brutal lesson years ago. They would always say the right words to your hearing to keep themselves in your favor, but start to spread lies about you at the instant you turn your back on them. What I didn’t understand then was the calculated nature of it all.
They didn’t spread lies about you just to make you look bad. They needed you to look bad so they could look good, and didn’t care if they had to do it at your expense. While spreading malicious lies, they inflict you harm (initially without you knowing about it until the lie has become so big it bursts, and you become collateral damage of their lies about you).
This early betrayal prepared me to recognize something far more dangerous: the liar in authority.
What’s truly frightening is working with someone in authority who lies without batting an eyelash. They can tear relationships at their own bidding, like master manipulators pitting the deceived against each other. And here I discovered the liar’s most insidious weapon: they always keep parties from seeing each other eye to eye to keep them from seeing through the lies, always talking to each of them in isolation.
This revelation changed everything I thought I knew about deception. Liars don’t just lie. They orchestrate entire realities where truth becomes impossible to find.
The wounds from my experience run deep. I often look back on my encounter and examine how the cuts still ache, realizing how hard it is to trust again the people who have lied to me, even when they are in power.
But I’ve learned to read the signs now: Those bright eyes brimming with lies, modulated voice, selective storytelling that you could almost always feel the wide gaps by your hand, and other non-verbal cues that always give away clues, even in minutiae. The dead always smell eventually, and I’ve developed a nose for the stench.
Liars don’t just lie. They orchestrate entire realities where truth becomes impossible to find.
What still befuddles me is how these people live every day telling lies, making themselves always the victim of their own doing, thinking they will forever escape the carnage they cause. Perhaps you cannot expect narcissistic people to act with empathy and kindness, even when they feign being the most kind and empathetic friend you can ever have.
The truth? Lies hurt, destroy, and give birth to distrust. But they also teach if you are willing to learn from the wreckage they leave behind. And hopefully, you don’t get fooled again.
jessa 