The biggest liars

June 5, 2009 by imakando musho ·
Filed under: Family, Friendship, Community, I was just thinking

My friend Lucia otherwise affectionately known just as Lulu amongst my group of friends is the best cook I have ever known. Not that she is a tough contender for Jamie Oliver; No. The only thing she can make properly is a not-so-good cup of tea which makes you ask, aren’t there a lot of six year olds who can make better things? However, despite her kitchen woes, there is one thing that I know my friend can do well, cook lies. The lies that she tells are capable of up seating the best politicians from their thrones, Obama included.

Lulu has met Joe Thomas, flirted with Chris Brown, stayed in China and can speak Cantonese to prove it (bits and pieces, yes-something she learnt from her Chinese boyfriend). I mean, she has done everything that is so cool that some of us who have parents in poor retirement can only do in our dreams-wildest that is. Tell ma, how many Zimbabwean kids can one meet on the road who have a private pilot’s license let alone a drivers license?

Not that my friends and I are worried about it. We love hearing her lies-well used to. When you have something eating up our mind, she gives you something nice which although will end in heart break, would have given you a cure for that moment only. Her lie-easy tongue has saved us numerous times form our inquisitive parents, speed police, club bodyguards and basically anyone disliked by young people who are either smelling or already in their early twenties.

However, her lies aren’t always savvy and productive. We have had fights and misunderstandings. We have had our hopes raised up high only to have them dropped right into our hearts. How painful. Then , we blamed her. She was the bitch of the group who for long periods of time no-one would want to talk to her yet amazingly she stuck with us.

However after reading an article on the internet, and referring it to all my friends, we realized it wasn’t her fault. I was our fault. We had built the friendship on lies wishful thinking and distant and unrealised dreams instead of reality. Each one of us had a lie, no, a dozen of lies that we were holding onto and because we had told them over and over they had become part of our lives and sadly, we were beginning to believe them ourselves too!

I for one had told people that I could drive yet up to now, I don’t even know how to move a car except yes, if I am using my God given physical strength. Of course, all this was being banked on a trial and error on my brother’s car which unfortunately ended up in disaster and alienated us for months. But since coming out of my closet, I can now proclaim to the world that yes, I cannot drive and when people look at me with queer eyes, i ask, ‘Is it strange that I don’t drive? How many of you could drive when you were Twenty?’ I have had so many achievement in my life to let a simple driving skill hold me down in lie bondages.

My other friend, Jenzten took the same stance as I. He is handsome, masculine, won many sporting awards and holds a a job as a stock analyst at a bank. Despite his success, he has failed when it come to women. He would tell us of the goriest detail of how he treated his ‘girlfriends’ and we believed him only to discover later-through his confession-that those were wild imaginations he had picked behind his bedroom door with the help of adult entertainment tapes. how explicit! But since coming out, he like me can proclaim that he has never kissed a girl and he is loving it. He has come to realise that he has achieved a lot for a 21year old to let inexperience with girls pull him down

Whether it is our unrealized dreams, wishes, could have beens, failures, and near misses, it is so true that in this world everyone is telling lies from the leaders, priests, to the youngest five year old who has just learnt ho to speak. Most of us are bundled up in our closets with not even enough room because we have thrown a lot at ourselves[thinking we were throwing at others] that now we are trapped in prisons of our own making.

Like spiritual guru, Iyanla Vanzat says, each one of us needs to take time to heal from the lies that we have told ourselves. And The easy way to do that is starting small, says Joburg based clinical psychologist, Anita Van Impe. She says that when we start small and see the smaller results, it gives us the courage to tackle the bigger lies that we would have made part of ourselves. Rome certainly wasn’t built in a day.

So despite the understandable shock at the lies that we had been telling each other, it wore off and despite it being so hard, we have rebuilt a new friendship based on the right principles. Now I know that one of my friends comes from a broken home, one has never had sex and one has never been on a plane. Its so comforting to know that I have got normal friends from normal families with normal lifestyles.

As fro Lulu, she is still working on hers and since some of the lies had become part of her in a strong way, she is seeing a psychologist to help her get it over with. of course, we sought of miss her old self but was that the real her we knew? I am thankful for that internet article I read, it has lifted a heavy load off my shoulders and those of the people that I care deeply about. Like R Kelly says, gay people aren’t the only ones who need to get out of the closet; we all should!

Imakando Musho

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