Congruence

Bless me reader, for I have sinned. I’m afraid I’m a hypocrite, a liar, and a cheater of sorts. I’m a contradiction, as we all can argue, but there’s something different about me, something extraordinary. I’m a pathological liar by trade, not by birth; in nature, not in aspiration. I was never like this, or maybe I was less aware of my self-contradictions.

Religion usually serves as a path that takes a turn toward cynicism, a turn which is coupled with personal contradictions for most who do recognize their changes. I am no exception; yet, I am at the same time in my hypocritical logic. I was born and raised Catholic, yet I question everything the church has given me. However, I accept most of the church’s beliefs as the truth and respect most other religions or lack there of (except the Baptists, something about telling an eight year old they have to work for God to save them is wrong).

As a child I matched inside and out. I would look on the brighter side of life, I would contend my normalcy, I would ignore my home life and have lovely times with friends at school. Growing up, I would defend my parents to the death and ignore the absence of family with all my anxious extra hours. My clothes were as quiet as my mouth and my attitude fiery as my temper.

Now, nothing matches. I force a smile as I look at the small defects and lies around me, I proclaim my normalcy but pray for individuality, I hate my friends, rather I get the impression that they don’t enjoy me, and I focus on my unsatisfying home life and all it’s faults while acting as a homebody. I refuse to call my father by anything other than his first name while playing the role of a perfect daughter; I dismiss my extended family as an audience that I play to, very well, in order to get them to love me. I do a lot to get people to love me that fact has never changed. My clothes scream forth but my mouth seems sewn shut and my voice only a figment of my imagination.

There is at least one particular time in everyone’s life that acts as a seam between who we were when we were born and who we’ll be when we die; a point where, in my case, I moved from truth to lies. There is one precise moment in time that is the bolt in the joint between our two selves. I can remember the exact minute of the junction in my life. I remember my defining moment as if it was only seconds ago.

It was the summer of 1998, just after my fourth grade year; my mother, sister and I were camping in West Virginia, in a beautiful place with a serene river, acres of trees complete with every natural color of green known to man, and crunching gravel roads. I was fetching water from the pump, which was ten well-spaced campsites away (a good two or three city blocks). My feet were bare and the heavy buckets of water weighed my body down, sending unyielding pressure down on my feet as they passed over the sharp stones; pain screaming through my skin. The day was warm, with a comforting kind of heat that hovers just around discomfort but never quite makes sweat appear. I walked, thinking about the lives of my friends, idealizing them for my own mind, missing my dark green plaid jumper; my catholic school days were over. I remember thinking of one friend in particular: Victoria, who was the daughter of divorced parents, and had cried several years before while making father’s day cards for a school activity due to the absence of her father, who, lived in Florida with his wife.

I had lost my own father to separation and hadn’t given it much thought in two years or so, since it had happened. I thought to myself about her tears and pondered why hadn’t I cried? Why hadn’t I cried when my father nearly died due to a spill out a window? Why hadn’t I cried for my lost home when it had burned to the ground? I had cried for the dog, which was found shortly after the fire and has since died, this December. Why hadn’t I cried for my dead grand parents? Why hadn’t I cried for my lost façade of normalcy? Why hadn’t I cried about the horror show that was my home at night?

As these thoughts swirled through my not so tiny head, I dropped the buckets, sat down in the road and submitted to my long delayed grief en mass.

I stood later after a silent cry grabbed the buckets and continued to the campsite. I didn’t really know how I had changed, I knew it had happened however; I couldn’t escape the fact of my evolution, though I tried.
It’s difficult for us humans, as we get older and more cynical to reflect on our changes since our youth. It’s almost as if we were all in a terrible accident that altered our existence. We long to return to our naive days but know it can’t happen. By no means does everyone have their joining point as early as mine, for many it takes until they have reached adulthood to have their point. Perhaps there are more than one joining points in our lives; I’m rather sure there are several moments in our lives that alter our being irrevocably. I ponder sometimes if all people remember their joining moment as vividly as I do mine though I doubt it, rarely does anyone think about the non- violent crossroads in their life.

These are what make myself and my hypocrisy extraordinary. I recognize my lies; I don’t accept them as truths. I reflect on how I used to match and how I lack the congruency in my early adulthood but don’t mourn it. I find myself exploring my memories with my apparently accurate recollection and an author’s flare for filling in the details.

My transformation into a hypocrite was also accompanied by a forced exit from the religious environment I’d known. The removal of this religious backing may have allowed my life to become the hypocrisy that it is, but I can’t know for sure. I still find the church to be a comforting entity in my heart, a pivotal link between my past, present, and future selves. So, reader, I apologize in the oldest, most comforting, and most ritualistic way I know.
Bless me reader for I have sinned, I have planted a seed in your mind, a seed of wonder about the turning point in your own life. It has been two years since my last confession.