Have you ever known a “compulsive” liar—someone who
lies on a regular basis? If so, were you ever aware of this fact? I once knew a
girl named Janelle who was so experienced at doing this very thing that I doubt
she even knew that what she was doing was, indeed, lying to people. I don’t
know about most people, but I cannot tolerate overt lying, for one’s own
personal and maybe devious reasons. But that’s what she did. Eventually I would
discover this fact and call her on it.
Nevertheless, I do believe people lie to
others on occasion for at least one of the following reasons:
1)
To be polite to someone,
2)
To spare someone’s feelings,
3)
To avoid an undesirable consequence,
4)
Because it’s easier to lie than to tell the
painful truth,
5)
Telling a lie has become a way of life for
some people.
There could be other “innocent” reasons for
lying as well. It’s just one of those things that people often do simply
because the truth would hurt too much. A lie just seems easier sometimes.
In my mind, the main difference between “innocent”
lies and the kind of lying Janelle regularly did was that she did it only for
her own personal and selfish reasons. For example, she would lie so the people
she considered her “friends” would not know what she was really up to. And she
was convincing most of the time; she certainly fooled me many times. I believed
her although I had some of my own suspicions, until the day that she told me
one whopper of a lie that I could not ignore. Her reason for telling me this
huge lie could only be to conceal the truth from me. It was relatively easy for
her to do because I wasn’t living in Calgary , Alberta , anymore; I now lived in Toronto , Ontario Toronto
But after going out to Calgary for a
friendly visit in 2004 and staying briefly with her and her family, which
included her husband, Raymond (“Ray”), and her young son, Brantley, I found
out, purely by accident, that Janelle was definitely not the kind of person I
wanted to keep as a friend.
When I first met Janelle, my son, Byron,
was only 2 years old. We ran into each other at a McDonald’s one day, after we’d
met briefly during a temp assignment. At first she reacted like I was a
complete stranger. Then, as she warmed up to me again, she told me she had a
boyfriend. I told her I’d been married but was now separated. That meeting
happened in late 1986. We had first met just a couple of months ago at the
Petro-Canada Centre downtown where several oil and gas companies kept their
headquarters. We were both temps working at Sceptre Resources. I worked in a
computerized accounting capacity and Janelle was an oil and gas secretary. I enjoyed
my work there a lot and wanted to apply to work full time for Sceptre
Resources, but the company didn’t hire anyone who did not already have
industry-specific experience. Since this was only my first job in the oil and
gas industry, I did not yet qualify for full time employment there.
Later, when we’d both left Sceptre
Resources after our temporary assignments were completed, I went to work as a
temp again for Pan Canadian Petroleum for several weeks, and Janelle got a full
time job as a secretary for a small oil and gas company. She didn’t like it
much though because her boss was a real a**hole, but she was at least working
in the industry that she wanted to be in. After my second temporary assignment
was done, I soon got a full time position working in accounts payable for
Billingsgate Fish Company Ltd. This company was the largest one of its kind in Calgary Calgary
One day, just after I’d arrived home from
work after picking up my toddler, Byron, from daycare, Janelle suddenly turned
up at my doorstep with no prior notice. I guess she’d decided, after all, to
become my friend. But it wasn’t like I needed more friends; I already had
plenty. For a long time after that, we would visit with each other on a regular
basis, once or twice a week, and we got along very well together.
However, I had no reason to suspect her as
a habitual liar until one day, when I found out through the grapevine that she
didn’t really have just one boyfriend but many. At that point, I suspected she
was more interested in sex than anything else. I could understand that to a
certain extent because we were both young and sex was important in a
relationship. She was seven years younger than me; I was 33 at the time, so
that made her 26 or so. Usually my own social life revolved around the weekends
if I went out. Like most women my age, sometimes there was a man in my life and
sometimes there wasn’t. I had learned to appreciate those times when I had a
good man in my life, which was not all that often. But I started to get the
distinct impression that Janelle would be with a man sexually only so she could
try to somehow persuade him to move in with her! Why? Because I think she was desperate to be accepted by her
younger female friends who all appeared to have steady boyfriends. I didn’t
want to live with any man though; I was busy enough just recovering from my bad
marriage. Having a steady boyfriend wasn’t a big priority for me at the time.
One evening, while we were out together at
a bar on a weekend, she met a guy named Roger. They were attracted to each
other pretty much instantaneously and began seeing each other. She told me that
he was definitely “the one.” Meanwhile, he would come over to her place after
work (he worked till late at night) and stay the night, eat her food and
generally live off her. Roger was my definition of a “leech”! But Janelle was
totally enamoured with him. As naive as I could still sometimes be, even I
could see that he was just using her for his own selfish purposes. In fact, I
thought she was just lying to herself. Why any woman would want to lie to
herself and allow a leech like Roger to take such advantage of her was beyond
me. But she was adamant—Roger was “her man” and their affair was going “gangbusters,”
meaning she was very happy with him until, one day, when she found out she was
pregnant. The baby was definitely Roger’s and he knew it. We all knew it.
After their daughter, Monica, was born,
Roger still remained part of Janelle’s life yet never really got involved with
his daughter’s upbringing. He left that part largely to Janelle. He certainly
wasn’t the kind of father who would be considered “ideal” by any means. It was
still the same old story. He would come over to Janelle’s place merely to eat
and sleep with her. Playing with his daughter or paying any support for her was
not a big priority. Eventually, of course, he wanted to leave Janelle but still
refused to take any paternal responsibility for Monica, such as paying child
support. Janelle, however, still thought the world of Roger and told this to
anyone who would listen. Roger, being the true prick he was, would later
demonstrate this fact by demanding a paternity test from Janelle for Monica. He wanted proof that Monica was actually his daughter! It was a real slap in
the face for Janelle.
By now I was getting tired of listening to
her constant crap about how great Roger was. Every one of her female friends,
from what I’d heard via the grapevine, apparently felt the same way. They didn’t
believe her anymore than I did.
Needless to say, we started to grow apart. I
had my own life to live and didn’t want to have her friendship anymore, since
she was hardly my idea of what a true friend should be. Eventually, I did get a
steady boyfriend and was fairly settled. My ex-husband, Victor, had not been a
good father to our son either; however, it didn’t seem to bother me much. All I
wanted from him was for him to pay me his court-ordered child support ($150 per
month) and leave me alone. Beyond that, I was fairly content. Being single, in
my mind, was not the worst thing in the world for me. Staying married to my now
ex-husband would have been a disaster. I considered myself lucky not to have
him in my life anymore.
During the time that Roger was still around
and part of Janelle’s life, I didn’t have much to do with Janelle, on purpose. I
couldn’t stand being near him. By this time, 1988, I was starting to seriously
think about going back to live in Toronto Calgary for good with my young son and moved to Toronto Toronto
Apparently, shortly after I’d left Calgary
About seven or eight years after I’d moved,
she met and later married her new husband, Ray, and they had a baby son,
Brantley. Roger had departed for greener pastures shortly after I’d left Calgary
In the summer of 2004, I decided to go out
west to Calgary Canada
When I arrived in Calgary Calgary
When I asked her about Brantley, she told
me he was 4 now. I’d forgotten when she had first said he was born, but for
some reason, I didn’t ask her at that moment. Meanwhile, Janelle was telling me
she and Ray had just celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary. I was really
happy for them. It wasn’t until I got home to Toronto
I only called her once more after that, but
she basically told me not to call her again; she had nothing more to say to me.
So I guess her response was my answer. It was obvious that she had lied about
something very important—when her son had been born—and she did it only to
conceal her premarital pregnancy from me. Why she’d done that was anyone’s
guess. If only she’d been honest with me, I could have accepted whatever she
said. I guess she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth about her
pregnancy and her subsequent wedding to Ray.
So much for friendship—I don’t think I will
ever really look at my friendships with younger females quite the same again. In
fact, this story made me realize how important it is to trust the people you
are friends with and that the trust you share with others should be based on an
honest and truthful approach to life and relationships. I promised myself never
to lie to anyone I was close to because it wouldn’t be worth the price I would
have to pay if the trust we shared disappeared for whatever reason.
copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
No comments:
Post a Comment