Hidden Shell

There are people many of us have known who lie as easily as breathing.
Lies about the big things,
Lies about the small things,
Lies so unnecessary they almost feel like instinct.

And often …. too often,
These same people were the ones who hurt us most.

Their words did not drift casually into the air.
They were aimed.
Sharp.
Intentional.
Like arrows finding the softest places in us.
The places we didn’t yet know how to protect.

They spoke to dismantle.
To erode.
To chip away at self-worth until nothing solid remained.

And even now, after we’ve walked away,
Those words echo.
Not as memories,
But as something quieter, something more dangerous …
Assumed truths.

We can look back and see their contradictions.
We can trace the patterns of their dishonesty,
The stories that never aligned,
The realities they bent to suit themselves.

We can name them for what they were: liars.

And yet,
Somehow,
We kept the cruelest things they said as if those were the only honest words they ever spoke.

Stupid.
Worthless.
Fat.
Ugly.
Unlovable.
Undesirable.
Lazy.
Trashy.
Whore.
Not enough. Not right. Not worthy.

These words linger differently.
They sink deeper.
They root.

So many of us carry our own versions of them,
Given to us by someone who left wounds instead of care.

And here is the quiet, unsettling question:

If we know they lied,
If we can clearly see the falsehood in their stories,
Their excuses, their shifting realities ….

Why do we hold onto the lies about ourselves as if those were the only truths they told? Why do we set down everything else they gave us, but carry that?

Why do we trust the voice that broke us more than the silence that followed
when we finally left?

Maybe healing begins here:

In noticing.
In questioning.
In daring to hold those words up to the same light we used to expose every other lie.

Maybe those names were never ours to carry.
Maybe they were reflections of pain, projection, insecurity.
Things that belonged to them, not to us.

And maybe, slowly,
Not all at once, not perfectly,
We can begin to put them down.

To replace them, not with forced kindness, but with curiosity.
With gentleness.
With the simple possibility that they were wrong.

Because if they lied about so much,
Why would this be the one place they told the truth?

You are allowed to question it.
You are allowed to reject it.
You are allowed to rewrite it.

And in the quiet that follows,
Where their voice once lived,
You may begin, softly, uncertainly, to hear your own.

Not loud. Not yet.
But honest.

And that is where healing starts.