R-0001: The deceitful child

Perhaps one of the most significant impediments to the compilation of this file is the recurring designation I received in my early years: liar.  I am not speaking of the minor childhood fibs that form a developmental milestone. No, this classification extended beyond individual moments to my entire childhood, where I was treated as if dishonesty was my natural state. It permeates my memories so thoroughly that I cannot guess when or how I may have “earned” this designation. 

What I do know is that the mechanism was consistent. If I said something unexpected or unapproved, if I recounted the day in a way that differed from an adult’s tale, especially my mother’s… well, the conclusion was foregone. I was lying. I remember in the early times protesting my innocence, or trying to be as precise as a young child can be to guard against such an accusation, but I quickly learned that these would not protect me. To put it bluntly, honesty was an attribute unique to everyone else. 

"For the heart" of a child, it was said, "is deceitful above all else."

With time, I adjusted. I watched my words and avoided superfluous details. I would try to anticipate the way my mother would phrase things, even when the shapes felt false in my mouth. Most frequently, I tried to remain silent. 

I also developed a compulsive need to gather evidence. Whether I was telling the truth or hiding it, the instinct was the same. I was always prepared for the inevitable accusation. I kept mental files on ordinary moments, saved small objects, rehearsed explanations, took note of details that other kids wouldn't bother to notice.

 

Despite outgrowing the environment of my youth, the habit has never left me. I still catch myself thinking: How do my friends know where I live? How do they know I didn’t invent my degrees, my job, my entire life? How does my lover know that I am not lying about my past? The scenarios are absurd, but young Jezebel developed these reflexes for a reason. 


What makes this difficult to unpick is how completely my parents’ conclusion overrode my own. I didn’t think I was misunderstood, I genuinely thought I was dishonest. The idea that memories differ between people wasn’t available to me. The idea that adults miss things, forget things, mishear things – it simply wasn’t part of the world I lived in. Even now, writing this record, I doubt myself: Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe I really was deceitful.


There was a group of teenaged, homeschooled girls my mother admired, and wanted me to emulate.¹ I once repeated something ordinary I’d heard them say, and she snapped that I was “twisting” their words, that they wouldn’t possibly say “those sinful things”. I couldn’t understand what there was to twist. They were just older girls being girls. 


More than once, she contradicted me in front of adults she needed to impress: my grandparents, her friends…  It was done lightly, almost with a laugh meant to signal that I was exaggerating again. I can still feel the way her fingernails dug into the soft spot between my neck and my shoulder as she smoothed away my fanciful statements.  Later, in private, she sharpened: don’t you ever talk like that outside the house again. It was clear enough: my voice wasn’t meant for adults, and anything I said would be reinterpreted as a lie anyway.

Sometimes she’d ask me to repeat myself immediately, as if she were testing for cracks. My answers matched, though not word-for-word, and this difference alone was treated as proof that I was lying. Even when I was certain I was telling the truth, the scrutiny was enough to make me doubt my memory, even to this day.

I learned to shrink myself to avoid being challenged and inevitably chastised or punished. Later, it shaped the basic way I saw reality: other people’s interpretations became more believable than my own. I still look for the “good reason” behind someone else’s behaviour and then turn around and indict myself for the worst possible motive in mine.

The pattern shapes how I speak, how I remember, and how easily doubt settles in my body. It obscures dates and chronologies and makes me question if any of this ever happened,  making it one of the earliest distortions in the archive.

And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became sinner. 

—1 Timothy 2:14

 

¹ Yet another topic for a future entry.

 

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