There’s a specific face people make right before they say something they don’t mean. A little pause, then the smile snaps into place. You’ve made that face. I’ve made that face, probably today.
Lying gets a worse reputation than it’s earned, honestly. Most of it isn’t scheming; it’s just upkeep. The small stuff that keeps a Tuesday from turning into an incident. You say the meeting went well. It didn’t, really. You say you’re on your way. You’re not; you haven’t put pants on yet. None of it registers as lying in the moment. It just feels like getting through the day without a scene.
What’s more interesting is what you actually do when the moment comes. Some of us go soft and vague without even deciding to. Some of us just… don’t mention the part that makes us look bad, and let people assume whatever they want. A story gets told enough times, and somehow the fish gets bigger every year; nobody’s tracking when that started. And some people would rather say the uncomfortable thing out loud than let it sit there unsaid for one more second, which is its own kind of exhausting to be around, in a good way.
