Why Did (Do) I Lie? An Adopted Person Tries to Tell the Truth

Sometimes adoptive parents write to me and ask what they can do about the fact their child lies. I tell them I don’t know and refer them to therapists who are well-schooled in adoption, who are, in fact, adopted themselves. (Why? Because I 100% believe a therapist who was adopted will vibrate at a different level than one who is not, and your child, whether in direct contact with this person or not, will know.) 

 A mom wrote to me tonight and said her young child lies about almost everything, and even though they can talk about it, the child doesn’t stop. I gave her my usual advice, and then sat down to dinner.

I thought about lying, about how English is my first language and lying is my second. I wrote about the first time I remember lying in You Don’t Look Adopted, so I don’t want to write about it again when you could read the book and leave a review on Amazon, so I’ll tell you this instead: I remember the thrill of seeing that lying was like punching a hole through the moment and escaping and that it was something I could, most times, get away with. The first time spiderwebs shot out of Peter Parker’s hands, maybe he felt a mixture of thrill and dread and fear—well,  that’s what I felt when I lied. Suddenly I had a super power and I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. 

Lying made me feel amazing, free, sick, and scared. Telling lies created situations in the outside world that mirrored the mayhem in my internal world that I could not articulate or even perhaps feel. 

I think being relinquished at birth can set you on a hamster wheel of trying to catch up, trying to catch your breath, trying to climb into your own skin, so while everyone else your age is sprinting ahead on the track, you are spinning on an invisible wheel that, much to your confusion and that of everyone around you, is preventing you from comfortably keeping pace with your friends and family. 

Lying is one way of coping when the world you live in is so deeply confusing you don’t have words for what is off. Your brain is spinning so you forgot to do your homework? “My sister stole it.” You need money for a field trip but you don’t want to feel like a burden? You go into your mother’s wallet and steal twenty dollars. 

(Lying and stealing walk down the street hand-in-hand. Both are ways of getting what you want through ways that sidestep truth.)

Adoption often sidesteps truth. First mothers are told lies about the couple adopting her baby. The adoptive parents are told lies about the first mother. The child is told lies by all the parents about all manner of things including who is and who is not alive, what is and what is not the child’s “real” name, and etc. 

I think when I was a child, I was partly testing out whether a “lie” was really a “lie”. I mean, I was living in a world where I was “Margery and Frank’s child”, but, truly, truly, truly, I wasn’t!! Right? I mean, I wasn’t born to them, so if language can be pulled to accommodate desire in such a manner and not openly labeled a lie, then how is it any different if I say I was not the one who ate all the cereal? My parents said they were my parents for many reasons including that fact that it was easier for them, just as it was easier for me to say I did not eat the cereal! 

You can see the logic. 

My small brain sure could, and it loved/hated playing with it. It was like reaching out to the air in front of me and finding out it was actually malleable and could open into a whole other world. This could be thrilling unless you already feel unmoored in the life you are in, then it’s more like, Oh, no. This, too, will cave in on me? This, too, this reality, could disappear on me?

Lying prevents a structure because YOU decide what is true or not. YOU get to create the world! Once you start, it’s really, really hard to stop. You’ve walked over the threshold between the solid world and the world of your own creation. 

And here’s where it gets tricky: after a while, or maybe right away, the line between lie and truth is so thin it can possibly not exist. As a kid, I learned how to live lies. If I said I was too sick to go to school, I made myself sick. It was easy to run movies in my head of the past and rewrite scenes. A lie was just the truth told another way.

I work hard these days not to lie. I’ve found the best way is to just call myself out. If I say something such as, I walked eight miles yesterday, I’ll get that edgy energetic wash through my body that tells me I’m making stuff up, and so I’ll say, “That wasn’t even true. I don’t know why I said it. I walked four miles.” I’ll smile and it’s never a big deal. The other person usually just laughs. Hahahaha. You caught your own self lying!

But it’s a big deal to me because I’m claiming my space in this world, this relational world, this world where, if you trust me, things will be so much more wonderful and real between us.

Boy oh boy, can this real stuff be painful and sickening. It’s Velveteen Rabbit stuff, worn down and ugly stuff. Nothing special. Ordinary. So scary. 

And, oh, oh, oh, so, so, so lovable. 

(I wrote this post quickly, trying to chase after the truth before it could see I was there. I’m not sure if any of this makes sense, but I tried. What can you do about any of this as a parent? I’m going to think some more and come back to the topic soon. I welcome your comments and ideas.)