The Whole Truth And Nothing But

― Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds

“The world makes liars of us all.” Truer words have never been said. I was raised to believe that telling the truth is always the right thing, so tell me why every time that I tell the truth I’m the bad guy.  I have always carried around the title of being mean. People would ask me for my honest opinion and well...I gave just that. In fact in my middle school days I got sent to the dean for telling this girl in my class the truth. She asked me if she was pretty and I told her the full unbridled truth. Long story short I said no , well I didn’t just say no but I said not to me which was the truth. She didn’t take it too well and actually told the teacher on me. I was sent me to the dean and we had a nice long conversation. Thankfully he wasn’t going to tell my mom or dad but what he told me that I should be more considerate of other people's feelings. That bothered me for a long time as I was contemplating on how the truth wasn’t considered being considerate. I mean I could have lied and said yes she was very pretty, like everyone else around her which would have hurt her in the long run but I decided to be nice and tell her that wasn’t ideal to me at the very least. Anyway that's how my title of mean came to be and for awhile I wore it as a badge of honor. It felt like I lived in a world of liars who would rather secretly hurt people than be truthful, so I didn't care.

I’m the one who looks like the jerk who’s out to hurt people’s feelings. What I’ve noticed is that this world is a place where you are taught one thing but everyone preaches the other. Where people say you should be 100% with somebody, but said person then scolds you for being too honest. This has been the story of my life For as long as I can remember, I’ve told the truth and either got sideways glances or shocked faces, like people couldn’t believe that I just said what I had said. I can say this though, my experiences have all been real eye openers for me. I’ve gotten to see how people act in different situations and each time I’ve noticed one thing they all have in common, people always lie. No matter what the reason may be; to protect, to harm or to just have an excuse in this world people lie. When I was younger I couldn't see how lying in any circumstance was a good thing. I was standing still while the world changed and moved on without me.

Way back when I was younger, my dad and I would catch the bus to my school so he could drop me off. Now to anyone else, this bus was like any other ordinary septa bus; kind of trashy, with no seats because people didn’t like sitting next to other people, and the occasional homeless person walking on asking for a free ride. However, this bus had one thing that made it more painful than any other septa bus. Our bus had a lady. I understand what you’re thinking right now, “what? Every bus has a lady on it.” That may be true, but most buses don’t have this lady. This particular lady had what I would like to call an acquired smell about her. This woman’s scent would travel all throughout the bus, assaulting anyone who dared to take a breath. No one would say anything about the smell. Everyone would just sit there quietly, pretending  not to even notice the unbearable stench. Even the bus driver ignored it! This kept up until one day when I decided to tell her. I walked up to the the lady and said, “ you smell like fish.” Everyone looked at me,shocked, but at the same time, silently pleased with what had transpired.

The lady looked angry, but with herself more so than me. She got up and got off the bus, never to return. I looked around the bus, and people were giving me thumbs up and smiling. From that point on, The bus driver even got free bus rides, but I couldn’t understand why. I did what they should’ve done in the first place. They let that poor women sit there, wrapped in the lie that she was fine, but in reality she wasn’t. Looking back I cannot place the blame her, but on the people around her. I took their silence on the matter as a lie in itself. The other passengers were attempting to dodge telling the truth in order to keep that woman from feeling hurt, but was that really helpful in the long run?  Withholding the truth from her just made it so when the truth was told, it was seen as rude and hurtful even though it is the reality of the situation. The world I live in is so afraid of the truth that people would rather lie as long as they think it keeps the other person safe.

As I grow older and hold on to the ideals of truth first in mind, the world around me is continually progressing into one where the truth becomes based on the situation and as each day goes by, I feel my mindset change into one where my truth becomes based upon each individual. I, as one who believes that the truth should be raw and uncut, find myself lying, and stating that I’m doing so in order to protect people. In english class I was given a book called the yellow birds by kevin power and at first I felt no connection but after I continued to read the book taught me valuable lessons about truth telling. What really resonated with me in said book is the main characters named Bartle. Bartle writes letters to his friends mom pretending to be him even though he had passed away. The letter packed with fallacies strung together by sentences. Bartle sent the letter under false pretenses and yet this seemed to make Murphy’s mother happy. This made me realize that even though it wasn’t the truth, it made her happy. At some point, she knew it wasn’t her son but most likely read them anyway. In this instant, unlike every other time, I’ve seen the lie actually helped in the long run. It helped Murphy’s mom settle into the fact that her son was dead and yes this was done by lying but this lie was born from good intent, even if unknowingly by Bartle.

I’ve come to terms with the whole lying thing. I still prefer the truth but I see knowing that only telling part of it is enough. I’ve realized that I’ve begun to grow accustomed to the situational truth, guess I caught up with my world at last.