Day 231
Automatically. Routinely. Unbelievably. I never knew I was a good liar until I began coming to terms with my addiction.
After I began attending recovery meetings I started getting a sense of how long and how easily I had been lying about the 'smallest things.' When I was awash in my bad behaviors, I had assumed that it would be my rookie lies that would get me found out; I was, after all, 'new' to dishonesty so I could not possibly be good at it. I had that thought/fear often, especially in the first year of massage parlors and affairs.
When I heard other addicts talking about 'rigorous honesty,' I began to realize my life-long history of deceits — mostly about things that didn't matter. I was quickly overwhelmed with a sense of futility; if telling simple truths is so difficult, how could I ever climb out of the life into which I had fallen. Even now, more than six months after disclosure, it too often takes conscious effort to not 'fudge the truth' about imperfections of little consequence. I have been trying to correct my untruths with the lied-to person(s), but it is hard and too often too delayed.
This well-seated pattern is shockingly more difficult a fight than just not acting out with alcohol or sex, and I'm weary of facing my falsehoods so often; I know I can do better. I have to do better.
Today, I will do better.
–JR
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