The lies they told us (according to me)

According to me and only me. I hold no one else accountable, responsible or in other way blameworthy for my analyses. It’s all me.

By my interpretation and in what I have failed to interpret correctly, here are some things I think are easy to say but are less easy to hear.

No, that’s not quite right; it’s not hearing it that’s the problem, it’s believing it makes sense.

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Whether you read the book or saw Love Story or saw it embroidered on a cushion, you know this one. And it’s such an absurd thing to foist on an audience that even Ali MacGraw (the actor forced to speak the words) said she thought it was nonsense.

Love will allow you to say you’re sorry when nothing else will. Love will abandon pride and self-righteousness and make you crawl through broken glass to apologise.

Because that’s what you do when you’ve hurt someone.

And then after you say it, you action it. You do the things to show you want to set things right. Otherwise, it is a hollow thing, fit only for fiction.

“Home is where the heart is,” they said.

And they keep on saying it. And one fine day someone is going to say it to you. What? How?

And more importantly, how dare they? For some people, the only way their heart is at home is if someone buried it in the back yard. Not everyone has a happy home life. Not everyone feels at-home at home.

Go on, flip it. Say that what this really means is that if your heart is at this particular place or with this person, then there be your true home.

But I don’t know if that is true either. My heart has landed in many places it was definitely not welcome. Maybe my love was not reciprocated. Maybe I thought I had found a home in a particular type of work, only to discover I was rubbish at it.

No, this one is too easy to get wrong.

“I’m there in spirit.”

This is one of my absolute favourite love-to-hates. I’ve spent a lot of time being either unwell or unhappy and if I had a dollar for every time I heard this, even in TT dollars, I’d be doing pretty well for myself. If you can’t show up, just say you can’t. In spirit indeed. I bet if you really thought your spirit was out and about you’d be scared half to death.

Whenever I hear this, a rage I try to forget I have starts to crank itself up. If someone said it to you, it was because they couldn’t be somewhere you wanted them to be. Maybe it wasn’t that important, in which case, a simple “Sorry I can’t make it” would do just fine. If it was important, like you wanted them to help you get through a stressful event or you were feeling low and wanted company, the spirit’s visit is not helpful. It’s been – I don’t know – never, maybe, since I had a good coffee and a chat with someone’s spirit.

Besides, if that was comforting to me, I’d just pray to whichever god I felt was up to it.

I know everyone – just everyone – says it. Even people I adore. Even you, like as not. But every time I hear, “It is what it is,” a part of me dies. This one is special because it manages be both true and false at the same time. Reason suggests it must be true. What else could “it” be if not what the self-same “it” is?

But the fact that you brought it up makes me wonder. Is it?

It is one of the most dismissive turns of phrase I’ve ever encountered. I’ve been insulted in profoundly direct ways that I find more appealing than being told this. This is how my mother would have felt back in the old-timey days if I’d responded to something she said with an over-the-shoulder “Whatever.” (“Whatever” is very 90s, for those too young to know.) It would have been as if there was absolutely nothing in the world that could be less relevant to me than what she said. That is how It-is-what-it-is makes me feel.

But I think the reason it’s so offensive to me is because it’s the cop-outest cop-out ever. It says you can’t, won’t or don’t care to do anything about the situation.

None of these phrases have malevolence at their core. They are merely convenient. I want something better.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.