I've decided to talk about lying this week because it seems like I've been hearing a lot of it lately. A lot of people are letting me down and either lying about who they are or creating outlandish lies about me. And it isn't just this week.
Over the course of my first semester at Longwood, there were many rumors being spread around about me, but I choose not to let them get me down. I know they are lies and my friends know, too.
People lie to give power to their words, attention to themselves, and revenge against you. You should take a lot of stories with a grain of salt. These people tell these stories for these reasons only. It betters no one to talk about some girl going out and having sex with a dude. It helps no one to talk about who's gay and who isn't. It helps no one to talk about people you barely know in a bad light, so others can hate them just as equally.
The priest from my childhood told me a story that really interested me, and I'm going to paraphrase it for you all: A man goes to confession and confesses to the priest that he has told a devastating lie about someone else.
The priest asks him to go to the top of the church where the bells are and throw a bag of feathers into the wind. The task seemed simple but the priest continued and told the man he must pick up all the feathers, every last one, and put them back in the bag. The man knew it was a deserving punishment and thanked the priest, but the priest wasn't done.
He told the man after he had retrieved all the feathers he threw into the wind, he must throw them from the top of the church all over again. He must then pick them up and continue this cycle over and over again.
He tells the priest that the task was insane, that it was impossible! But the priest told him that it was a fit punishment. Once a lie has left your mouth and ruined someone's life, there is no taking it back.
That story was surprisingly one of the only stories to stick with me through my Catholic days, but it resonated with me. If you are going through a lie, I feel terrible for you, but you have to keep moving on.
I don't think too many people experience rumors at a Hannah Baker level, but anything and everything can be damaging to someone. Be kind with your words, know who you are talking about, and recognize that they can't defend themselves when you talk in private without them. Honesty is a virtue for a reason, not everyone has it.
And if you are one of those people going through rumors right now, just know that others talk about you because you are your own person, you make them jealous and angry, and that your existence is somehow deemed interesting in other people's live. Nobody talks for no reason at all, after all.
