Unreliable Narration.
After conversation with a very understanding friend in the early part of this year, it occurred to me that I probably need to tell each and every one of you exactly what I told her. I've finally gotten around to it, because I feel like this needs to be said.
I'm not a liar in the conventional sense, but I have a habit of saying things that are not technically accurate at this precise point in time. Some of you are shaking your heads and saying, "Naamah, that's what a lie is." Others among you are probably nodding and going "Jeez, yeah, I wish more people understood the difference." You both have a point. Let's just say that while I'm trying to do this less, as in never, I still don't regard most of this as lying, and whether or not you want to view that as part of my problem is up to you.
My reaction to growing up around a lot of people I could not trust, not predict, or not understand was to obscure the truth, prevaricate, and lie. About everything, because I could never know which truths would get me in trouble. This applies to spinning fabulous yarns, as well: it's a very effective means of distraction, and of making sure you have control of the conversation. I don't need this reflex any longer, but it's a hard one to un-learn.
I am also chronically evasive about some things. So evasive, in fact, that I cannot even delineate to you what I am evasive about. Hopefully I am good enough at this that you will never notice it.
If I can't remember something precisely, I may make something plausible up. That's also reflexive -- I'm a storyteller by nature. In the words of Chaucer from A Knight's Tale, "I'm a writer. I give the truth scope." If I remember 40% of a story I am telling, I will fill in the missing 60% without a second thought. I don't mess with the important parts, though.
I will also lie or evade or otherwise bend the truth to protect someone else's privacy/secrets/safety, and I err on the side of caution. Mostly, I try to say "I can't answer that, it's not my story to tell," but there are cases in which even admitting that there's a secret to protect would be compromising.
In regard to my own life and history, I have been known to retcon myself. If I wish I had gone ahead and said that witty thing, I may pretend I said it. I'm trying to stop, and none of it is important stuff. I did not delete a boyfriend, a stint in prison, a murder, or a bigfoot sighting. I did not manufacture whole people or pets . . . or bigfoot sightings. The really good stuff and the really bad stuff is all factual. As with The Ghost and the Darkness, all of my most unbelievable stories are true.
I've made a sincere effort to be honest, especially during the last couple of years keeping this journal, but if you are a meatspace friend you should know that a lot of my honesty online comes from being able to choose the where and when of my interactions. Sometimes in real life I get spooked, tired, flustered, or just plain overexcited, and because this is a defense mechanism formed to help me out of exactly those situations, it still happens. I hate that, but it's true.
It's an often hilarious but not necessarily easy thing to live with, knowing that you actually are the unreliable narrator -- sometimes to the point that you don't even realize you're narrating unreliably. My instinct is, of course, to pretend to not be that way. I fib my own unreliability out of existence, sometimes so well that I will swear to people that I am honest and straightforward before I remember that, oh, no, I'm actually not. It's probably annoying, but it's not meant to be malicious.
There is another explanation for the occasional seemingly bizarre or contradictory utterance: I am fucking crazy.
Mixed states, bad depressive episodes, hypomanic states, all do strange things to your sense of time and reality, so I sometimes remember things strangely.
I can often tell you exactly what time it is - Sargon has seen me do this down to the minute - but equally often my sense of what month it is fails completely. Subsequently, I have a very bad sense of time and date. Right now, as I write this, it's 5:30 on September 04th. I think it is 10:53 at night on July 23. July 23, 2007. Just as my dreams are lifelike and occasionally surreal, my life in retrospect seems very dreamlike with intermittent periods of lucidity. I keep a journal partly to help with this; my time sense and memory have not improved since I started to do that, but at least I have a concrete reference that I know is correct because it was written as it happened.
So that's it. All of it. I make shit up, but - perversely - I don't consider myself a liar. I'm getting much better, but these are personality tics that I will probably always have.
There are two major things that I try not to do:
I try not to lie if I believe someone wants an honest opinion about something that is really important to them. I may take a while to answer because I do try to be tactful, but if you want honesty, I will try to provide it.
I try not to lie to people I love to cover up my own wrongdoing. I want to say that I never do that, or never would, but human nature is human nature, and I am what I am. If I ever do that again, I want to be called on it - privately, please, remember I am quite possibly doing it out of fear or confusion - because I've just gone to a bad place that I have tried not to go to for a long time now.
There is a difference between being a person of embellished reality and being unfaithful or untrue in heart to those you respect and love. I am not the latter, and I try pretty damn hard to keep the fact that I'm the former from making me that way.
I'm not a liar in the conventional sense, but I have a habit of saying things that are not technically accurate at this precise point in time. Some of you are shaking your heads and saying, "Naamah, that's what a lie is." Others among you are probably nodding and going "Jeez, yeah, I wish more people understood the difference." You both have a point. Let's just say that while I'm trying to do this less, as in never, I still don't regard most of this as lying, and whether or not you want to view that as part of my problem is up to you.
My reaction to growing up around a lot of people I could not trust, not predict, or not understand was to obscure the truth, prevaricate, and lie. About everything, because I could never know which truths would get me in trouble. This applies to spinning fabulous yarns, as well: it's a very effective means of distraction, and of making sure you have control of the conversation. I don't need this reflex any longer, but it's a hard one to un-learn.
I am also chronically evasive about some things. So evasive, in fact, that I cannot even delineate to you what I am evasive about. Hopefully I am good enough at this that you will never notice it.
If I can't remember something precisely, I may make something plausible up. That's also reflexive -- I'm a storyteller by nature. In the words of Chaucer from A Knight's Tale, "I'm a writer. I give the truth scope." If I remember 40% of a story I am telling, I will fill in the missing 60% without a second thought. I don't mess with the important parts, though.
I will also lie or evade or otherwise bend the truth to protect someone else's privacy/secrets/safety, and I err on the side of caution. Mostly, I try to say "I can't answer that, it's not my story to tell," but there are cases in which even admitting that there's a secret to protect would be compromising.
In regard to my own life and history, I have been known to retcon myself. If I wish I had gone ahead and said that witty thing, I may pretend I said it. I'm trying to stop, and none of it is important stuff. I did not delete a boyfriend, a stint in prison, a murder, or a bigfoot sighting. I did not manufacture whole people or pets . . . or bigfoot sightings. The really good stuff and the really bad stuff is all factual. As with The Ghost and the Darkness, all of my most unbelievable stories are true.
I've made a sincere effort to be honest, especially during the last couple of years keeping this journal, but if you are a meatspace friend you should know that a lot of my honesty online comes from being able to choose the where and when of my interactions. Sometimes in real life I get spooked, tired, flustered, or just plain overexcited, and because this is a defense mechanism formed to help me out of exactly those situations, it still happens. I hate that, but it's true.
It's an often hilarious but not necessarily easy thing to live with, knowing that you actually are the unreliable narrator -- sometimes to the point that you don't even realize you're narrating unreliably. My instinct is, of course, to pretend to not be that way. I fib my own unreliability out of existence, sometimes so well that I will swear to people that I am honest and straightforward before I remember that, oh, no, I'm actually not. It's probably annoying, but it's not meant to be malicious.
There is another explanation for the occasional seemingly bizarre or contradictory utterance: I am fucking crazy.
Mixed states, bad depressive episodes, hypomanic states, all do strange things to your sense of time and reality, so I sometimes remember things strangely.
I can often tell you exactly what time it is - Sargon has seen me do this down to the minute - but equally often my sense of what month it is fails completely. Subsequently, I have a very bad sense of time and date. Right now, as I write this, it's 5:30 on September 04th. I think it is 10:53 at night on July 23. July 23, 2007. Just as my dreams are lifelike and occasionally surreal, my life in retrospect seems very dreamlike with intermittent periods of lucidity. I keep a journal partly to help with this; my time sense and memory have not improved since I started to do that, but at least I have a concrete reference that I know is correct because it was written as it happened.
So that's it. All of it. I make shit up, but - perversely - I don't consider myself a liar. I'm getting much better, but these are personality tics that I will probably always have.
There are two major things that I try not to do:
I try not to lie if I believe someone wants an honest opinion about something that is really important to them. I may take a while to answer because I do try to be tactful, but if you want honesty, I will try to provide it.
I try not to lie to people I love to cover up my own wrongdoing. I want to say that I never do that, or never would, but human nature is human nature, and I am what I am. If I ever do that again, I want to be called on it - privately, please, remember I am quite possibly doing it out of fear or confusion - because I've just gone to a bad place that I have tried not to go to for a long time now.
There is a difference between being a person of embellished reality and being unfaithful or untrue in heart to those you respect and love. I am not the latter, and I try pretty damn hard to keep the fact that I'm the former from making me that way.