Ask Me No Questions and I'll Tell You No Lies

I'm thinking about lying to my mother. I imagine most people have lied to their parents at some point or another and I'm no exception, but this is different. This isn't an innocent "I'm going to the mall with my girlfriends" when I'm actually meeting a boy kind of lie. The lie I'm considering has meaning, connection, guilt and ulterior motives. It might even be an ugly lie.

I told a friend of mine that I was considering telling my mom this lie and she helped me come up with a great justification. Since the lie starts with the phrase "I dreamed..." and most dreams are unconscious, I may actually have dreamt it. Maybe what I dreamed only revisited my consciousness later and is actually a memory rather than an idea. That resonates with me because I find the boundary so unclear between memories, ideas, daydreams, dreams and everyday reality.

My mom doesn't take very good care of herself. She lives 3,000 miles away from me and caretakes for the remainder of the family there, including 3 (relatively) able bodied young men, their 5-6 miscellaneous children, a random woman friend who lived with us in my youth and lives with us again, my grandmother and to a lesser extent her brother, sister and extended family. She takes pretty good care of them, even though she has a chronic cough, intense physical pain, emotional grief and needs to rest.

I have spoken to her often about her need to rest, to recovery, to take some time for herself. I appreciate that she's helpful to the people around her, but I feel that it has become a parasitic relationship and in her less guarded moments, she agrees with me. So I've considered telling her that her dead husband (my father) came to me in a dream telling me to move her to my locality and take care of her. I don't know if she'll listen to this any more than she listens to me in any other way, but this is the most powerful phrasing in my family culture since 1/6/06: dad would have wanted.

It's unfair, probably hurtful and possibly unlikely to achieve results since she has built herself into a hole with grandma, my brother and her house guest living in the house she was supposed to sell this summer, but just maybe... I probably won't do it. Lying is wrong, after all. But I want better for my mom. I want her to have a better life. I want her to last long enough so that I can take care of her. I'm afraid she's going to burn her candle out taking care of other people. I'm afraid she'll never be able to live long enough or near enough to babysit my fat brown babies or teach them to sneak buckeyes out of the fridge when mom's not looking or rock my daughter the first time some boy breaks her heart.

It seems like this is what dictatorship is - determining what is best for someone else without their consent, but if it will help me keep my mom around in a healthy and happy state, I'll use whatever tools are at my disposal, including lies, but who knows? Maybe it was really a memory or a dream and not just an idea.

The Meaning of Secrets

I couldn't think of the term double standard, so I almost couldn't write about secrets until I remembered that term. Word-memory problem, but I've got it now - double standard. That's what I have about secrets. For me, I love secrets as the guardians of my privacy. It's not even that they or I am guarding anything particularly worthy of a secret, but the very act of having information that no one else has. It's strange to me sometimes when people who are close to me don't want to know my secrets, don't want to get closer, but at the same time I'm not a very good defender of my own secrets, so I don't really want to be asked anyways.

The double standard is this: I HATE other people's secrets. I can't stand it. I get suspicious and paranoid. I assume that every mis-statement, omission or hesitation is reflective of a grander scheme to somehow make me look of feel like as ass. It's probably because of how I was raised - I'm sure that JR would say so, at any rate, always finding fresh fodder in family-of-origin. Certain things were just kept as secrets among the family - other things were certainly meant to be secret from the children, the girl children or specifically just me, but were covertly shared or overheard.

I wonder how much of that was intentional secrecy, protection or ignorance instead of the spite I considered it. I do consider it spiteful for people to have secrets against me. Getting to know people deeply has become difficult, because I don't dare ask people personal questions they might not answer - if they don't answer, they have a secret and what does that say about me?

I'm rambling about secrets. Basically, I need to remember the four agreements again and that it isn't all about me. Another way to phrase that, in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "What are men thinking about? Nothing." What is anybody thinking about? Usually not me and that's probably a good thing.

Just Being Nice

I was ogling my boyfriend in the car the other day and complimented his profile - he asked, "on MySpace?" [For those others who don't remember the original meaning of the word profile, it means: a representation of something in outline; especially : a human head or face represented or seen in a side view.]

Speaking of profiles, I have an online profile and have even posted a series of photos, despite my many misgivings. My partner complained that he didn't like my photo though because I hid my face behind my dog. It's a cute photo, but he's right, you can't see my face. So I went through my photos searching for a more appropriate photo for my profile - he expressed admiration for many of them, so I picked one and posted it.

The change was noted by many of my friends on that site. I received some compliments, but then a new friend said it made me look older. This was the permission that my partner needed as he then said that he actually didn't like that photo and had just told me so to be nice. It's sweet that he wants to compliment all my photos, but not so nice to allow me to post a not-so-good photo.

So yesterday, I made a drastic but temporary change in my appearance. I LOVE it and sent him a photo on my phone right away and asked if he liked it. He said it looks hot and came over right away, but hesitated when I said I could make this change more permanent. That's the problem with just being nice! Note to self : tactful honesty is the best policy.