The Big Lie

The couch’s old, worn fabric scratched my hands like sandpaper as I dug my fingernails into the thick, woven threads and let the news sink in—the truth in it was undeniable. For the first time in my life I turned to the person I loved the most, the guardian assigned to me at my birth, and looked upon them with distrust.

“You lied to me,” I said. “You lied.”

Tears pilled on the ends of my eyelashes before dropping into my lap, sinking into the deep blue fabric of my jeans. Somewhere inside my chest a dam burst and drained the reservoir of faith I had so carefully protected thus far. The light that reflected off those pristine waters flickered siphoned away and I vowed to never ever trust a human again.

I inhaled shakily and forced the tears to stop, freezing their shimmering, shallow riverbeds with a hardened expression.

“Is Santa a lie too?” I asked.

“Well…” Mom looked sideways at dad for help but the man only ever knew how to shrug and grunt like a lifeless gorilla. I didn’t even need to look at him to see his shoulders scrunch and his face adopt that agonizingly familiar look of bewilderment.

Mom sighed.

“Yeah, Santa’s not real either. Neither is the tooth fairy.”

I nodded my head solemnly.

“You mean they’re lies,” I emphasized.

A flush of rage welled up like black bile in my mouth. This whole time I had suffered punishments and groundings and been forced to confess my lies, my sins, to the priest at school, believing that I was living up to a standard of truth all adults aspired to, a truth that God and baby Jesus clearly required of good Christians. But no. They had been lying this whole time, tapping into the supply of joy I exuded when opening presents at Christmastime or while hunting for eggs at Easter or whenever I lost a tooth. They fed off of my believability. They harvested my exuberance for their own selfish reasons.

What kind of people do that? I wondered. What kind of people are willingly liars, willingly sinners?

I allowed the injustice to echo through the living room as my parents looked on, unsure of how to proceed. But quietly, a small voice emerged from that space in my heart where the waters of faith had lapped quietly at the edges of my now-empty reservoir.

The kind that feel lost.

The kind that can no longer create their own magick.

The kind that wish to rediscover themselves.