little white lies

i just don’t want to seem boring

This morning I’m feeling like a big liar.

This morning I woke up late. I didn’t really wake up late (see, I’m starting the lies already)… I woke up early, then decided to sleep until I was waking up on time, and then decided to sleep until I couldn’t possibly sleep anymore without being terribly late and then I got up. Now, if I had just gotten up and hurried, I probably could have gotten to work on time. But, no. I take a long hot shower, talk with Sleepy Eric for a while, get dressed, feed the cats (there’s another lie… usually I feed the cats, but this morning the cat food was in Eric’s car and I didn’t feel like going down to get it– man, I’m terrible), and then for some reason, I did my hair and makeup. I never put on makeup before going to work, but I have a show tonight, and I won’t get to go home before it, so somehow I’ve convinced myself that if I look nice now and don’t move much throughout the day, then I will still be pristine this evening…

I lied again when I said “for some reason” like I don’t even know why I did that. See, there’s a chance that an old boyfriend may see me tonight– he’s performing in the club next door. And I don’t want him to pop in and see me on stage and think, “Wow, so that’s what she’s doing with herself these days. She’s really not very funny. And what’s up with her hair? Jesus. These people paid money, the least she could do was look presentable.” I haven’t seen him in three years, you see, but I know that he will be there, just on the other side of a door. He was there last week, but he didn’t stop by. Maybe he didn’t know I was looking for him. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me. Maybe he came in the same time I was doing the sketch about the girl who ate people on their first date. It could be any one of those things, but I did not see him last week. I’m thinking tonight I may very well bump into him.

So I leave for work, and now I’m officially late. I’m going to be about twenty minutes late when I get there, and although no one ever says anything, or maybe even notices, I get terrible anxiety attacks about it. So I’m driving thinking, “Okay, if anyone asks, I’ll just talk about how I was delayed at a gas station because the guy running my credit card was new and he hadn’t done it before so it took like ten minutes. Oh, but that’s not enough time. I guess I’ll say there was a long line at the bank too. But they know I have direct deposit… I’ll just go with the bank story, that’s pretty good. Oh, I should grab lunch, I won’t get to eat today… I can’t stop, I don’t have a story that would explain me being half an hour late. And I can’t call in now, because if I call in saying I’m going to be late when I’m obviously already late, that’s pretty dumb. I’ll just go and hope no one notices.”

And no one noticed. But as I sit here with my hair all done up and my lip gloss on just so, I keep thinking, “Why did I have to make all those lies for myself?” Because I’m afraid people will think lower of me. That I’m some sort of a slacker. They don’t know that when I leave work here today I go straight to a last-minute called rehearsal, followed by a show, and I’ll get home around 11:30 and I still won’t have eaten today.

Then I appear to be this mooch girl around here because I don’t take a lunch, so I always have to hope that someone is going somewhere for lunch and they’ll get me something too if I give them money. I eat at the mercy of my co-workers. And I don’t like doing that, but there’s not much else I can do about it, short of making myself lunch in the mornings, which I hate doing because I like to get Maximum Sleep.

So I over justify. I make up stories in my head to tell people just in case they ask why I’m doing what I’m doing. Because the truth is boring. I was sleepy. I was dawdling getting up this morning. I had a boyfriend on one arm and a cat on the other and the whole thing was just perfect with the sun coming in through the window and I didn’t want to ruin that sleepy, hazy moment by getting up and going to work. It was too lovely. I just wanted to lay in its warmth for a few minutes more.

But if I said that to anyone, they’d be like, “Well, I left that at home, too. What makes you so special?”

And I wouldn’t have an answer for that of course, and then that’s when I’d probably get written up or something and then I’d have this horrible mark on my record and they’d start calling me “late girl” or something and then it would just be days until I got fired.

Now I know I’m lying, because I don’t know anyone around here who has been fired for truancy or tardiness. We have unlimited sick days, so it’s not something that you can get penalized for. I guess it’s just ingrained in me from school. You can’t be tardy, you can’t be absent, or there’s points taken off.

I don’t want points taken off.

So I cover my ass, unnecessarily. I don’t care, I’m always ready with an excuse.

But I don’t lie like that in my daily life so much, I just make excuses for the dumb things that I do. Is that wrong? Yes, of course it’s wrong. I should never lie. But I don’t want people to think that I’m boring or stupid. It’s bad enough being dorky. You don’t understand my pain.

Oh, I’m just a big fat fatty liar. That’s all I am.

Just don’t tell anyone, okay?

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