I lie. Often. 

It’s the same lie in various iterations. It’s not big. It’s not earth shattering. But, it’s there. 

“I’m good! I’m good.”

It’s my stock answer when anyone asks me how I’m doing. We have all told this lie. It’s easy. People ask us every day how we’re doing like they’re asking what we had for lunch. We all know that no one really wants to hear an answer beyond “I’m good” any more than we want to give it. But the answer is there like a rotten piece of fruit ready to hit the ground with a hollow thud.

The answer and the truth is I’m not good. I’m not even close to good. I couldn’t find good right now with a GPS device engineered by NASA. I’m a vitriolic mass of rage and self loathing. I want to break things into a million little pieces and burn shit down to the ground. I’m depressed and angry and lonely and weak and exhausted and so fucking afraid to tell you that I feel irreparably broken deep down in places I can’t even reach because I’m sure you’ll think I’m crazy. But I don’t say that. I’m afraid that letting those words come out of me will take any last semblance of power I have and give it away. And I don’t say that either. It’s the fear of looking weak and unstable that stops me as if I hold a firm belief that if I’m not the funny one, the one always smiling, the one full of life, no one will want this other one and you’ll never see me the same again. I don’t say that because I can only imagine the stunned look on your face if I just dropped that drama bomb in your lap. I fear your judgment. 

I was raised under the auspice that it’s how we appeared to be on the outside that people needed to see. Hide your crazy. My crazy is like a small child lurking behind a door leading to an immense room full of people and she is scared shitless. I’m becoming aware, though, that everyone in the room knows she’s there behind the door. They glance her way. They catch her eye. Last week, my best friend marched right up to her and took her by the elbow and looked her square in the face.

“It’s okay to lose your shit. You have to. You’re doing a really bad job of pretending everything is okay and you’re fine and we all know you’re not,” she told me. “You’re going through some shit. Some nasty shit and you have to break apart a little. Everyone expects you to and is ready for it. You can’t not do it. No one, not even you, is that strong.” And she’s so very right. So I’m trying but I can honestly say I have no idea how to fall apart. 

It makes me wonder how many other people out there, that I ask this ridiculously stupid question to everyday, lie to me and to others. Because I’d like to find them and invite them to spend time with me and everyone else on an island called Owning Our Horrible Shit. 

Do me a favor and do others a favor. Find another question. Dig a little deeper and ask something you actually want the answer to. Ask me what’s good because I can find something there. I can tell you about my daughter’s reaction to opening her Christmas present from me, or seeing kids I coached again after 20 years and enjoying an adult conversation with them, or the dimmer switch I installed in my house all by myself which gave me immense satisfaction. But don’t ask me how I am, because at this point, I’m going to tell you.