No More Lies

By now most of you know that Beth and I have parted ways.  It’s a long and somewhat sordid story, of which I shoulder the blame.  Without going into details, I made choices that I should not have made…and of which I am more than a little ashamed.  Not the least of my transgressions are years of lies.  Beth even said in the midst of all the revelations that had we talked earlier…years earlier, things may have been different.  She’s right, of course.  Yet hindsight is something we don’t have at the time we make those choices, or we surely wouldn’t.  Instead there are little steps that beckon us into a world of secrets and omissions.  We are slowly lulled into a sense of false security in the thought our secrets are safe, and that they won’t be discovered.  We create double lives that we pray will not cross into each other. 

Yet they inevitably do.

I have spent the past several months contemplating this.  It is not easy admitting one’s shortcomings, especially when they manifest into a breakup of a marriage of many years.  It is also not an easy thing to see the worlds of those close to me crumble, and to see the disappointment in others’ eyes.  I would like to say it’s because of the pressures of life, my state of mind at the time, or other circumstances that in the end are merely excuses that demean even those to whom they’re offered.  When all is said and done, the responsibility rests squarely upon my own shoulders.

And I accept that.

So what happens from here?  Time will tell, and the one redeeming aspect of this is my own determination to change.  To never put myself into a circumstance that will cause another to hurt in the way this has hurt so many.  Three little words continue to echo in my mind since that fateful Sunday morning in October, and have become a motto of sorts.  It is ironic that such words need to be reinforced, yet it seems to be the case for me.

No more lies.

A friend told me recently that she would rather hear the truth despite how hard it may be, than to be subject to a lie.  She would rather make up her own mind and deal with the repercussions as long as it is the truth.  I don’t think I could’ve said it any better.

Another friend said that one shouldn’t look too long in the rear-view mirror, because that “ain’t the way you’re goin’”.  Though it is easy to dwell on what happened, and a certain post-mortem examination is good if we are to learn from our mistakes, life does eventually move forward. 

No more lies.