I put myself into a situation last month wherein I found myself lying in totality more than I had in my entire life. I fooled myself into thinking the act of telling falsehoods was somehow protecting someone’s feelings. But the truth of the matter is my lying only compounded the challenges and hurt the person I was trying to protect.

Having always been an overly honest, frank, yet gentle person, I had never experienced the domino effect of lying before. I hadn’t been in a position before in which I was creating new lies to cover up previous lies, nor in the position of trying to recall what I had said in previous mistruths to validate and confirm current mistruths. I found the whole process excruciatingly exhausting, and both physically and emotionally daunting. I finally reached a point where I told the person the whole of the situation, mostly because I was ‘caught’ in the process, and also because I couldn’t stand to tell one more lie.

The truth about lying is that the act itself causes me great distress.

Because of the way my mind works, I overanalyze the simplest of things; however, the most prevalent means of overanalyzing is seen in my natural, seemingly instinctual, ability to search for truths, (and try my best not to lie). To complicate the ordeal, having been around this earth long enough, (I am ready to be beamed up.), it’s quite clear that truths are too complex of matters to ever be discovered in completion. To truly peel the outer layer of the proverbial onion off to find the core of truth is impossibility—the process in and of itself futile.

Yet, still my mind peels and peels, thinking at last I will figure out the reality of truth; even as I know now, at least conclude now, that the only reality is love and service, and trying my best to be the best version of me, whilst allowing myself to be human without gluttony-based-behavior manifested as self-punitive thoughts.

Regardless of any knowings, my brain will continue to try to find the truth, the facts, the reality, etc. The reason, it seems, is I have this engrained responsibility to be authentic. I mean it’s carved into my essence—the very heart of me wanting nothing more than to be me.

And that is where everything gets complicated. For there is no me I can find.

Beyond this philosophical plight, there remains the undeniable, double-stubborn part of me that insists on being honest, even as the depths of honesty elude me. They, the depths of honesty, are complicated by manmade rules. Whether the rules be about feelings, or disclosure, or privacy, or social behavior, the rules affect my ability to figure out how to be. This in itself in a quandary: For if I am in constant state of trying to figure out how to be me, then when am I me? My mind gets stuck on wheels of thought like the aforementioned, and I become exhausted.

In this interplay of finding truth, simple acts become tiring, thinking becomes tiring. Everything is a hurdle and I the limping former track star trying to merely move beyond the obstacle. I become utterly dumbfounded and lost in a maze of possibilities. In partaking in something as simple as ordering coffee at a local spot, I undergo distress. I wonder if my facial expression is what I am feeling. I wonder if my tone of voice accurately reflects the inner me. I wonder if in my response to ‘how are you,’ is a true response. I wonder if my thoughts are kind about the person, and if they are not kind thoughts, I wonder what is kind? I become lost from the simple act of facing a person at a cash register for under five seconds. Time slows down, too, as if I have the ability to process things at the opposite of hyper-time, and enter a zone of almost endless contemplation, until I am pulled back by a sensory trigger such as the voice of another or chime of a machine. I then question my actions. Was I ‘ADHDing’? Was I time traveling? Was I over-thinking? And then the judge comes forward, the voice I stopped pushing down, and now simply observe and let slip away. The voice reminding me how different I am than most around me; how most of my life is spent in another world, way beyond the experience of the common bystander I observe.

And the thoughts don’t stop then. I am in a constant state of preparation of truth. Sometimes I think a certain species was created to be a light bearer of truth; this species being Aspergers and those on the spectrum. At least sometimes this appears the case to me. But I think whomever plopped some of us down, forgot the enormity of the task of the act of bearing truth, forgot the infiniteness of truth, the way the frays off the branches of thoughts bleed out into millions upon millions of splintered-possibilities, and how the mind can only handle so much. I think this creator, or these creators, whether it be God, aliens, genetics, or mutations, overlooked the humanness of us, the frailties, the ways in which our own minds would override our sense of freedom and hope. And how inevitably in longing for the truth, more than anything, we would lose sight of not only ourselves, and those around us, but the very gift of life.