The Lies I Tell

by Julie Clark

You can prepare yourself for something, imagine it a hundred different ways, and still find yourself breathless when it actually happens.

Emotional people take risks. They don’t think clearly, and they’re eager to believe whatever fantasy I feed them.

The main element of a good con is a strong thread of legitimacy. Of almost being who you say you are. Just like on a movie set, I’m real. My actions are real. It’s only the background that’s fake.

and how many of them played out to his advantage. I think back to how he tricked my mother, robbed us both of what was rightfully ours, and I wonder how many others Ron has used and then discarded on his path to state senator.

Ron Ashton, the man who tore my life apart, sending my mother into a downward spiral she never recovered from and leaving me to live alone in a car for my final year of high school and beyond.

A woman on the run, flush with the power of knowing I could become anyone. Do anything. All I had to do was tell a man what he wanted to hear.

Good fortune and second chances. Everyone wants to believe those are real.

yesterday. “I learned that the worst can happen and I’ll still be okay. Life is filled with lessons. We can either choose to suffer from them, or learn from them.”

Instinct is a funny thing, a whisper of trouble that we can never quite name, never quite define, that allows us to locate danger. Women are taught from a young age to ignore theirs. We’re forced to justify our instincts with evidence, or we’re taught to ignore them—as a way to keep the peace, to prioritize other people’s comfort over our own.

The lies I tell serve a purpose, tipping karma in the right direction. Returning power to those who have lost it. The difference between justice and revenge comes down to who’s telling the story.