I would be OK hearing that history. I really would.

Mine is equally personal, and it is a subject I am clearly passionate about.

My mother was mentally ill, and would routinely beat my brother and me for crimes such as "touching the floor" and "not washing your hands for the requisite ten minutes after you took off your shoes."

No bones broken; no blood drawn. But also, not simple whippings. "Beating" is the accurate term. Tools were often involved, and when mom got tired, Dad would grudgingly step in, because matrimonial and parental solidarity.

Lying became a way of life to escape violence. It sucked, every time.

Sucked worse when I was caught or could not sufficiently prove that I did not do what I was accused of. That would make the beatings worse. I would be called a "habitual liar" at high volume, and more often than not, the charge was true.

(Funny story, but I was genuinely more afraid when mom said that, because the word "bitch" was in there, and if she was cussing, she must be really pissed off. I was, like, six. I wouldn't learn the definition of the word "habitual" -- and that it wasn't actually a variation of "bitch" -- for some years yet.)

But if there's a silver lining here, its that I became attenuated to the damage lying does.

It is difficult to maintain a web of lies, and it almost always falls apart completely with a single sweep of the arm.

Everyone a person lies to -- everyone -- suffers from it. If not immediately, than eventually.

Lies poison everything they touch, and hurt just about everyone they affect. Sometimes this even includes the recipient of a surprise party, though I've only seen that once.

Lying is the antithesis of trust and respect.

And to bastardize a quote from a certain Mr. Raymond, the truth seems to have a mind of its own, and it always wants to be known. Lies are simply a matter of time; a delay tactic.

...anyway, once I left home, I decided to just tell the truth all the time. One quickly learns to take care regarding phrasing and delivery, for sure, but there's a line there in my life, and it is inscribed deeply. So deeply, that I have, in time, come to consider "sins of omission" or "lies of silence" as equivalent to purposeful and outright falsehood. I figure as long as you aren't getting beaten for it, you'll come out ahead. And I admit: It's a gamble. It may make you lose some "friends," but I've found that the ones that go? Years later, it often becomes clear that they are not people you would have wanted to keep in the first place. The ones that stay, respect the hell out of you so much that it is almost absurd. When viewed from this perspective, truth-telling is very much a win-win situation: I have the kind of friends, and the intensity of friendship, that other people wish for. I've no doubt that they are fewer in number, but I'm more grateful for them by an order of magnitude, and the amount of "failures" this attitude has caused in nearly 40 years of life amount to exactly two.

And those two... over time, have not proven to be shining bastions of humanity and ethical behavior.

A person who is a friend of lies and lying has almost always proven to be a negative force in my life, and the lives of many others. Is this in my own myopic, biased, personal (and uneducated, if the word of some is to be taken as fact) experience -- given, of course, a freedom from the threat of violence as a motivator? Sure. Of course it is. But I think, perhaps erroneously, that this counts for something.

Lying is no longer something I will even consider as a viable option myself, a very few exceptions notwithstanding. And yes, I do almost reflexively consider opposing viewpoints as morally bankrupt, a fact I cannot really, at this stage, help.

Perhaps this makes me a poor conversationalist on the topic. In fact, it may be likely.

But I just don't have it in me to be apologetic about that.

Edit: seriously, fuck lies.