The First Lie I Ever Believed

There were years I didn’t feel real at all, trying to be someone I thought folks could stand. That’s the first lie right there. This one’s about finally calling bullshit on all of it.

I remember hating myself from a young age. At five, I would chew my nails down to the bloody quick. Not from habit or boredom, but from tight, knotted fear I didn’t know how to name yet. I didn’t understand what anxiety was but I was filled with it and felt the need to ease it with control.

I didn’t just try to control the chaos around me. Sometimes I was the chaos. There were raised voices. Hurt feelings. Moments I wish I could take back. I wasn’t trying to scare anyone. I just didn’t know how to calm the storm inside me without letting some of it spill out. I thought if I could keep people in line, if I could manage the mood in the room or steer things before they went off the rails, maybe I’d feel okay.

But the older I got, the louder I got. I didn’t always shrink. I raised my voice. I tried too hard. I wasn’t trying to take up so much space. I just didn’t know how to feel safe in my own skin. I didn’t know how to trust calm. I thought peace was something that came after the work, after the fixing, after I got everything and everyone under control. And when that didn’t work, I sometimes came undone. Not to hurt anyone. Just because I didn’t know what else to do with all that fear.

The lie I swallowed was simple but heavy.

That if I could manage people, emotions, and situations, then I’d finally be okay. That love would follow order. That safety was something I had to earn by holding it all together.

So I started managing. I could read the temperature of a room like other kids read storybooks. I knew who was close to snapping, who needed to be soothed, who was quietly seething. I learned when to speak and when to disappear. I kept myself small, thinking if I didn’t cause problems, maybe no one would see how broken I already felt inside.

I didn’t know how to be myself, so I made someone up.

By six or seven, I was telling kids at school that I had an older brother. He didn’t exist, but in my head, he was everything I needed, strong and calm and loyal, the kind of person who made you feel safe just by being nearby. I’d talk about how he picked me up sometimes or gave me advice or stood up for me. I think I just wanted to be the kind of kid someone protected. I thought if people believed I had someone like that in my life, they’d assume I was well loved. That maybe I’d be seen differently. That maybe I could believe it too.

In reality, I was the oldest of four. I had no older brother. I had no protector. I just had this aching need to be seen as someone worth protecting.

That kind of pretending doesn’t stay in childhood. It grows with you. The lies just change shape.

I didn’t quit pretending when I quit drinking. I just lost my numbing device. Suddenly, all the feelings I had buried under years of wine and people-pleasing came rushing up like a flood. And there I was, bare-faced and sober, still playing roles I didn’t know how to step out of.

I finally opened the imaginary closet in my mind, where I kept all the well-nurtured hurts, the old blame, the shame that had started to feel like furniture. I pulled it all out and tossed it where it belonged. Behind me. And for the first time, I started filling that space with something better. Goals, hopes, and pieces of who I might become if I gave myself the chance.

I live with imposter syndrome. It’s not occasional. It’s baked in. It shows up when I’m working, when I’m trying to love someone, when I sit down to write. It creeps in even on the good days and tells me I don’t really deserve any of this. That I haven’t earned peace. That I haven’t earned joy. That if people really knew me, like really knew me, they’d turn around and walk the other way.

At the barbershop, that voice is quick and mean. It tells me I’m not that good, just lucky. That I’m going to mess up a cut or say the wrong thing or freeze in the middle of a fade and they’ll all see what I already suspect. That I don’t belong there. That I don’t know what I’m doing.

And when I write, it gets quieter but sharper. It tells me I’m not a real writer, just someone who’s good at making their trauma sound poetic. That this isn’t a gift. It’s just a diary with decent grammar. That I missed the window a long time ago, and no one’s going to care now.

It even shows up in conversations, especially the ones where people seem grounded and confident and certain of who they are. I start to shrink. I smile too much. I nod along when I don’t agree. I forget what I was going to say or decide it doesn’t matter anyway. It feels like everyone else got a life manual and I’m over here writing mine page by page, hoping I don’t get it wrong.

I keep waiting for someone to call me out. To look at me and say, you don’t belong here. We figured you out. You’ve been faking this whole thing.

But I’m starting to realize something.

That voice isn’t some divine truth. It’s not my gut. It’s not insight. It’s just an echo from the scared little girl I used to be. The one who chewed her fingers raw. The one who made up a brother because she didn’t know how to ask for help. The one who thought love had to be earned by being small and sweet and easy to be around.

She’s still in me. But she’s not in charge anymore.

I’m not pretending anymore. I don’t have all the answers, and I still feel shaky as hell most days, but I’m trying something new. I’m telling the truth, even when it feels like too much. I’m letting people see me. Not the performance. Not the fixer. Me.

And the more I do that, the more I realize I was never a fraud. I was just a kid who learned to survive by hiding the parts of herself that needed love the most.

Your Turn:

Did you ever make something up, not to lie, but to survive?

A story. A role. A version of you that felt easier for people to accept.

What did it cost you?

And who are you becoming now that you don’t have to pretend?

You don’t have to answer perfectly. You don’t have to say a lot. You can just say “me too.”

That’s enough. You’re not alone in this.