Lies, and the lying liars who tell them... (part 1)

I had a mental break the other night - a full blown nervous breakdown.

I wasn't sure it was possible with all the medication I've been on since the stroke. If I wasn't on all the meds, I think I would have had another stroke.

It's not just moving back in with my parents, or the fact that Robin and I can't find a house of our own to rent or any of the obvious reasons that a 37 year-old man living at home would be stressed.

No, it wasn't anything like that. I can't stand a liar on the best of days, and living with my parents is a reminder of how far I've come.

It used to be, when I was fresh out of high school and starting college, that I was a liar, too. I was good, so good it was scary.

The trick to lying is to convince yourself that the lie is true, then you can speak with conviction. I've known a lot of liars, and all of them eventually began to break from reality.

The aquatics director at the YMCA in Lexington was always blaming every mistake on me. I kept going into work and everyone was surprised. "I thought you had been fired," they would say. It turns out he knew no one liked me and thought he could get away with it.

After he left, he went to work in Chicago. He was fired from Chicago. As it turns out, he had lied about his credentials when he was hired. He only had a Lifeguard Instructor certification, meaning he could train and certify lifeguards, and not the Lifeguard Instructor Trainer certification that he claimed. The last I heard his wife had divorced him and was working as a stripper in Lexington.

My friend Rob thought he was a Lifeguard Instructor, but when he and another guard would teach a class, the aquatics director would submit the rosters under his name.

I went to the Frankfort YMCA next, and the Executive Director there impressed me. He was always in his office at odd hours. As it turns out, he was gay, he had been sleeping with teenage boys, then hiring them to work at the Y so they wouldn't rat him out. He's in jail now.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I happened across Hunter S. Thompson. It was the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that captured my interest. I read everything I could by or about him.

He was a liar and a trickster, but no matter how outlandish he got, no matter how hyperbolic he went, he always told the truth. I realized - I wouldn't have to alter my skill set. I could use the techniques and devices of fiction to tell ultimate truth.

Which is why I went back to school to study Journalism. If truth gets buried by lies, it may never recover. Truth is very fragile, but also very powerful. Or maybe it's the other way around; truth is very powerful but it's also easily damaged.

I decided long ago that the central part of my life, the core of my belief system would be Truth. Not God, not Jesus, not any sort of philosophy or system.

Just Truth.

I truly believe that if you live honestly, if you have nothing to hide, that you will be healthy. I tried to lie about something I did and it stressed me out to the point my brain popped and I had a stroke.

Never again. Not even a little white lie to spare someone's feelings.

Which brings me to the other day...