Many, many, years ago I knew a person who lied all the time. And when I say all the time I mean that if they told you the time you could be certain it was anytime but the time they told you. If they said the sky was blue, you could probably wager that it had suddenly changed colours. To be fair to this individual, when I was introduced to them, the person providing the introduction did say 'this is X, don't believe their lies, and they lie all the time.' I laughed at the time and X just shrugged, as if they were used to this introduction, and were resigned to it being the way they were described.
Over a couple of years X and I got to be fairly close friends, and I begin to realize that the person who introduced us was correct. X lied ALL THE DAMN TIME. Sometimes, a discernible reason was there, and I could almost understand why they had lied. We all lie, and we all lie a lot. We lie to other people, to the cops, to the taxman, to our significant others, and to ourselves. We tell, what we consider 'white lies', just to get through the day. These lies are just part and parcel of being human beings in contact with other human beings. Some of them are truly white lies, lies that we tell to (at times) protect the feelings of the people we are lying to. No, that dress does not make you look fat, of course it wasn't your fault that something you were working on fell to pieces, I love you more than anyone else in the world. These types of lies, the lies that we tell each other daily, were child's play to X.
X would tell those types of lies for practice. In many ways, those little white lies that X told was probably the closest that they ever got to telling the truth. The dependable everyday lies, usually told in short sentences, were not really worthy of X's skill. You see, X was a consummate liar, a liar that lied for the sake of lying. X told so many lies that I was fairly certain that they had to have some whiteboard of lies pasted to their bedroom wall just to make sure that they didn't lose the plot. And X was a plotter of the first order. A person who always took the long way to get what they wanted, no matter how simple it could have been accomplished. In many ways, watching X 'work' was a thing of beauty, that is until you realized that everything they said was a blazing lie.
Eventually, like with most things, X's lies got old, real old real fast. The major problem with X's lies is after a while they started getting sloppy. And a sloppy lie is just awful to behold. I begin to realize that by putting just a tad bit of effort into things I could unravel X's lies, and begin to realize that X was just a complete and utter bastard of a human being. It wasn't overly difficult to figure out that X was working all sides of the street, just a couple of chats with other people who knew X, and a little comparing of notes made it very clear that X was exactly what our mutual friend had told me they were all those years ago, a liar. And not only was X an liar, but it appeared that X was a bad liar. It is an long held belief of mine (if I hold to any beliefs at all) that if you are going to do a thing, you should do it well. What is the point of doing something badly, and X's lies were badly done. It would not have taken too many brains, or too much effort for X to arrange their lies to 'fall into line.' Lies that would stand enough scrutiny to be believed, or believed by the right person for the right amount of time. Lies that you could be proud of, lies that would stand the test of time, but X wasn't that type of liar. Their lies were shoddy things, built on the cheap by a charmer of snakes that couldn't be bothered to make sure their lies were consistent.
Lies are like that, they like milk, have an expiration date. And like milk, you need to keep gallons and gallons of them around just in case you need to either make a cake, eat a lot of cereal, or convince someone you love them beyond compare. An expired lie is as useless as useless can be, and once X's lies started to expire things only got worse. X became unable to renew their lies fast enough, and those among us who still cared began to pull the string that unraveled all those lies. It didn't take much, because as I said, once we started sorting it out, we really realized what a poor liar X really was. A charlatan that promised us the tonic to cure all our ills, but was just merely selling us sugar flavoured water. Sweet tasting at first, but ultimately bad for our teeth, our stomach, and everything else we had.
Therefore, I had to cut X out of my life. What distant shore they washed up upon, I do not know, nor do I particularly care. It is not something that concerns me over much. X was never going to be one that stuck around, even before I started to no longer believe their lies. There were some nice lies in the amongst the regular detritus of lies that X spouted, but they were just simply lies. Lies that we chose to believe until we figured out that they were not true. We always had that sliver of hope that X would reform, or the belief that X lied to everyone but not to us. That is the foolishness of mankind writ large, to believe that someone is going to put you in the 'special bin', and treat you differently (i.e. better) than they treat the rest of the world. That is fool's gold, and you might as well try proving that Santa Claus really does exist while you are believing in miracles. However, like the rest of the known world I will still hang my stockings with care in the (vain) hope that X and Santa do not have as much in common as I think they do.
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