(The story starts in the next chapter, you may skip this if you like)

It is my philosophy that life is easy if you are good . . . at lying about almost every aspect of yourself.

Society isn’t ready for a person who goes out wearing a sweat pants and a tee shirt, so people lie about their reasoning for dressing so sloppily.

" I didn’t get enough sleep last night.” You complain and appeal to the understanding of others who also lack sufficient sleep.

" I’m so done with everything.” You laugh it off as a joke to your peers.

And the most common excuse,” I don’t care what other people think, I’ll dress however I want to.”

Really, if people didn’t care what others thought of them, they wouldn’t try to explain their strange attire.

Whether it’s a poor test grade that you lie about to make yourself seem smart, or a simple lie about what you did over the weekend so you don’t have to tell your friends that you spent 48 hours in your bed binge watching your favorite show and eating take out like the fat ass you are, no one likes to show others what they’re really like. It’s understandable, I mean, what other people think of you could change every aspect of your life. Whether or not you get that promotion. Whether or not your blind date ditches you with the check. Whatever it is you tell others about yourself can change everything.

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So as people who are terrified of the possibility making things worse in the future, we lie. We do it in such excessive amounts that it becomes part of us.

" I work out every other day.”

You now have to buy a gym membership.

" I look this way all the time.”

You can never see these people without makeup on again.

" I’m a C-cup.”

You have to stuff your bras and buy push-ups for the rest of your life.

And although those things seem frivolous, we are now bound by those false truths forever. We instinctively try to keep the lie from ever being found out and we begin to act differently to maintain a false identity that we made up to make ourselves look better.

You go to the gym more often to make sure no one suspects you lied. You spend thirty minutes in the morning putting on makeup to make sure no one finds out what you really look like naturally, and you buy bras that make your cleavage pop out of your shirt to ensure your lie becomes reality.

Slowly these lies dictate your life and you are kept in a perpetual cycle of maintaining them because an underlying shadow of fear that you will otherwise be rejected by everyone pushes you into it. Those lies cage you in as you are inevitably given the choice between letting others see what you’re really like or continuing to lie about yourself to seem like you’re good enough. And as always you choose to continue the untruths as you remain a volunteer in your ever-shrinking enclosure of lies and exaggerations.

You become caged in.