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Ok, I did see the other thread about this topic and based on the feedback given I have decided to give a little more background info. so buckle in for my life story or at least as much as I may feel is relevant. I actually had to get a little typsy in order to type this up as it may and probably will be more than I have ever shared with anyone in my life.
My earliest memories were in a foster home in Louisiana. I remember occasional visits from my mother but thats about all until I was pulled out of foster care at around 7 or 8 years old and put back with my mother in Chicago. Shortly after I arrived she married my step-dad Leonard. He was a good man. I also had a brother and sister with my mother and he took us all in and claimed us as his own. I didn't recognize it as so at the time but life with them was very abusive. We were routinely hit and punched etc... but it happened so gradually over a period of time that I never really even thought of myself as being abused even though looking back now I can see myself in class pictures etc.. with bruises and split lips.
Then an older brother I never knew I had came to live with us. My mother had lost him before she even had me. Things were pretty much the same except that money grew tighter and tempers with my parents grew even thinner. Then a year or two later another brother and an older sister came to live with us. Again I never knew they existed before they came to live with us. In fact by this time I was so old that I had feelings for my new sister that no brother should have for his sister simply because I didn't know her emotionally as my sister. I was around 13 or so, love struck and naive. Tempers grew even thinner and finances simply fell apart. People laugh like I'm joking when I tell them about Chicago winters with no heat except a kerosene heater in the middle of our living room. With no heat was no gas. So in sub zero winters with no heat showering was an impossibility. I was a ridicule at school with my dirty hair and clothes and smelling of kerosene. I still remember with pain my teacher exhibiting me for the class to see the product of bad hygiene.
Then the impossible happened. My father, probably under the strain of supporting so many children he didn't even know existed when his marriage began, fell ill and died after spending a year in a coma. My mother sold the house and whatever else she could and moved us all to Florida. From the beginning I really started to hate my mother. She was squandering money on cars and the like before finally moving us into a double wide trailer home. She was having an incestuous relationship with another older brother that we ddidn't know about until our move to Florida. (She was from florida and apparently this is where she began shooting out children.) By then all of us kids were receiving social security survivor's benefits from social security and my mother refused to get a job as long as she could live off of the checks she was receiving for us from social security. I was in high school and was really trying to do my part until my younger brother and sister ran away and never came back. I was devistated. My younger brother and I had always been together, even in foster care. So I left home at sixteen and moved in with my friends who were all going to art school. It was around this time that two things happened. One, I got involved with drugs, heavily. And I started lieing.
In the beginning it was mostly about my past. I tried to make an alternate past for myself because I was so ashamed of the past and the family I came from. And over time it was embellishing the truth. I got into the club scene and even deeper into drug culture. My morals were completely askew to begin with but they were unrecognizable in this atmosphere. was doing acid, ecstacy, cocaine, whatever I could lay my hands on. I was doing so much acid that I was doing five to seven hits a day just to get going. I am NOT exagerating on this. Then just as the party was coming to a close the police and DEA agents were asking people about me. By this time I was deeply ingrained into the distribution machine in clubs all over Florida and parts of Georgia. I had to get out. So I left Gainesville and went back to Palatka. I moved in with my mother where I managed to stay for nearly a year before getting my GED and moving back to Chicago with nothing more than the contents of my pockets and a greyhound ticket.
Once in Chicago i vowed to leave my past behind me. I even dropped Lee as my name since he was a loser, a victim of his past. I became Christian. But by this time I was embellishing the already extraordinary events I had already been through. My lieing was out of control by this time I was 19 years old. If someone had a story i had a better one. The attention always had to be on me. I was back on the club scene at this point and the surest way to gaing instatnt stardom in the club scene was having grandiose stories about life on the club scene in other cities. I was a star. After a few years and a few long term relationships doomed to failure because of my lies. (You can never hide the holes in your stories from those closest to you, they really are paying attention to details) I met my wife. We dated for six months or so as an open couple. Then we got married. I insisted that our relationship remain open. I never slept with anyone else for as long as I was with her but I encouraged and pushed her to sleep with others. I convinced myself it was what she wanted so i wanted it for her. (Looking back I can see how my self esteem was the motivator behind this and how I didn't feel i wasn't worthy of her intimacy) But this and my lies eventually pushed her away from me and she left me. The divorce was devistating for me.
But then i moved to DC and started again. The only thing that didn't change were my lies and my fear of intimacy. A few years ago I met the woman of my dreams. I was a lot older than she was, by this time I was 32 and she was 21. I met her on the club scene. She was young enough to believe my crap and since she was going to school 300 miles away she was far enough that I only saw her on weekends. So it took her a few years to catch on to my lunacy. But when she did, she rocked my world. The breakup alone destroyed me. But she went further in telling every single person we knew about every lie I had ever told. Those told to her and those told to them and others. I was instantly hated by one and all.
That was a year ago. I now live in New York City and am trying to turn over a new leaf. I'm no longer hanging out on the club scene. Drugs are in my past. And I'm trying not to lie anymore but it's hard. I had been telling them so often for so long they became my truth. They were never intended to hurt anyone, just to boost myself up a bit. When I walked away from everyone I knew in DC I convinced myself that it didn't matter. They were there and I was moving to NYC and chances are I would never see them again. All I could do was try to begin a new and try to cure myself. But then this morning I woke to a horrible dream. In my dream some friends in DC who were Celia's friends brought me some artwork from a recent show for storage. Each of the pieces from the show depicted me as a wolf in sheep's clothing. I awoke upset and crying. I guess even after a year it does matter after all.
Nobody has to say anything to this at all if they don't wish to. It really just felt good to finally let it all go. But dos anyone out there have any experience with habitual lieing? I could sure use some help.
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Originally Posted by braveheart
