The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out

by William Dameron

What we put out into the universe comes back to us, but who can predict the amount of time it takes to make its return, or what form it will assume?

We didn’t leave anything behind. We packed it all up and brought it with us, including my insecurity in bubble wrap, and unpacked as soon as we reached our new home.

the things we hide become desperate to be seen.

It was as if I were trying to lift the entire house above me, with all of its secrets and its silences.

We were both coping with the isolation, our skin hunger, as scientists have coined the phrase, in much the same way.

It was as if we were playing a game of Jenga with our lives, each of us taking turns to remove the blocks, but both silently agreeing not to pull the one that would cause our world to crash.

The kiss was like an echo, and on the other side would be our marriage, our children, and the lonely sound my name would become from both of our mouths.

She lowered her voice and peered over the glasses resting on the end of her nose. “You know, she told me she couldn’t sleep because the sound of your heartbeat keeps her awake at night.”

I threw a punch filled with my self-hatred directly at her.

That night was tinged with sepia-toned nostalgia at the edges like an old postcard from the past with a simple message in big block letters, “Wish you were here.” But here was more than a place; it was a moment in time that I could never travel to again.

When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.

Group therapy is like online dating, becoming intimate with strangers to avoid suffering alone.

What really should have alarmed me was that I was so willing to become someone else, without fully understanding who I was, to prove that I was worthy of being loved.

We are all of us an assimilation, a collection of bits and pieces of everything and everyone we love.