LOVE AND LIES

I Started Believing My Own Lies

The next morning, I texted him.

I asked if he could come over and help me with an Excel document for work. It was a simple lie. Easy to say. Easy to believe.

I did not need help. I needed him. I wanted to see him again. To sit across from him and feel that quiet pull I could not explain. To make sure what I felt the night before was real.

I told him the church leaders were leaving and that it would just be Tracy and me. He said he would come after church.

Just like that, I had something to look forward to.

We kept talking. The conversation moved easily, like it always did with him. At some point, we started talking about music. I told him I studied music in high school and later at the London School of Music and Dramatic Arts. That part was true. I told him I had studied music up to master’s level. That was a lie. What I did not tell him was that I dropped out.I left to focus on church. At the time, it felt right. We were taught that anything outside the church was unnecessary. Even wrong. We were told to limit ourselves and focus only on faith. Looking back, it sounds extreme. But at the time, we believed it.

In that place, it was easy to lie. Easy to reshape your story. Easy to become what people expected you to be.

The church ended in 2020. The pastor was exposed. What we thought was leadership turned out to be manipulation. Women came forward. Truth came out. And everything collapsed. After that, I stopped going. Not completely. Sometimes I still went with Tracy. But it was never the same.

Strangely, I never saw Kiara there. Maybe he went to different services. Maybe I just never noticed him.

But in our conversations, church became something that connected us. And in that space, he admired me. He saw me as grounded. Disciplined. That was not entirely true.

He loved music. He understood it deeply. And instead of admitting I did not match him, I adjusted. I filled the gaps. I became someone else. Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like lying. It started to feel like becoming.

He came over after church, exactly as he said he would. Calm. Focused. Steady.

He sat down and started explaining the Excel sheet I had claimed to be struggling with. I tried to follow, but I was not there to learn.

I was there to watch him.

The way he spoke. The way he thought. The quiet confidence in everything he did. It pulled me in more than I expected.

Tracy joined us and that is when things almost went wrong. She started talking about work. About how difficult it was working for a small company.

I felt it immediately. The shift. The way his expression changed. That was not what I had told him.

I did not hesitate. I laughed it off and said she was talking about other people, other startups, not us. I made it sound casual, like it meant nothing. He nodded and just like that, it passed.I had fixed it.

It was becoming too easy.

Later, we made dinner. Rice and vegetable stew. Tracy took over the kitchen, which worked in my favor. I did not have to prove anything. I stayed with him.

We talked about family. He spoke about his with ease. With love. With certainty. I could not relate. My family is nothing like that.

But I could not tell him that. So I lied.

I told him we were close. That we had Christmas dinner, opened gifts on Boxing Day, and took walks in the woods. A perfect life.A perfect lie.

He listened and he believed me.

He said something that should have changed everything. He said he might not be ready for a relationship. It was simple. Honest.

That should have been enough. It should have made me step back. But it did not.

It made me want to try harder. By then, I had already imagined us. Built something in my mind that felt real.

I was just not interested anymore. I was invested.

He left later that evening, and I walked him to the Underground station again.

This time, I did not reach for a hug.

The walk felt quiet. Almost like a goodbye.

But my mind was already searching for another way. Another chance. Another version of myself that might make him stay.

When we got to the station, he reached out first. He pulled me into a hug. It was brief. Simple.

To him, it probably meant nothing. But to me, it felt like a possibility and that was where the danger was.

Because the more I wanted him, the easier it became to lie and the easier it became to lie, the harder it was to ever be real.