Never Lie

by Freida McFadden

It’s so amazing sharing my life with him. Except for the one big secret he doesn’t know about yet.

My mother always said not to leave the house in shoes you can’t walk a mile in.

“Adrienne Hale,” he reads off the back cover. “Isn’t she that shrink who got murdered?”

How are you? The three most useless words in the universe of communication. Nobody who asks that question wants to know the answer. And nobody who answers ever tells the truth.

“Of course. The water is a bit brown though, I have to warn you. I’ve gotten used to the metallic taste, but it bothers some people.”

I just hope he feels the same way about me after he finds out about my revelation. I feel ill every time I think about it. But I can’t keep it from him much longer.

Human beings don’t deal well with rejection. Back when our ancestors were hunters and gatherers, being ostracized from a tribe was akin to a death sentence. For that reason, rejection is experienced by human beings as being incredibly painful. Studies using functional MRI have shown the same areas of the brain become activated both during rejection and during real physical pain.

narcissistic personality disorder—the characteristics of this diagnosis include a long-term pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, cravings for admiration, and impaired empathy.

A psychological study demonstrated that cheating or breaking rules results in an unexpectedly good mood afterward. As well as a brief sense of freedom from all rules. So perhaps we should all bend the rules sometimes.

I believe that any human being is capable of terrible things if you push them hard enough.