lying to yourself

There is nothing worse than realizing that you have lied to yourself. When you realize that someone else has lied to you, life goes on as you can make excuses. The problem with lying to yourself is that you have made all of the possible excuses, and not believed them. You can't fall back on, "well I knew something was wrong" because you obviously did not know. And the shock to find out that you had been deceiving yourself is horrible. Suddenly, something that you accepted as absolute fact is untrue. No matter how little an issue it was, your mind is rocked to the core because it calls everyone of your other beliefs into question. "If this was false, why isn't that?" Let me give you an example from my life. I met a girl in Europe who I really liked - just as a good friend. I am the kind of person who only makes a few really good friends, and she met all of my criteria. I hung out with her for about 6 months and then we both went to our respective homes in the US. For several months we emailed each other on a regular basis, and yet all of a sudden she stopped writing me. For a while, I just assumed that she must be busy. Then, after 2 weeks, I stopped believing that. Then I assumed that she must have gone on vacation, but after 4 weeks, I just did not believe that anymore either. All this time I was writing to her just about every other day, trying to elicit responses. And yet after a month, I still had recieved nothing. And so I started trying to track down her home phone number. I had reached the stage where I was actually worried that something had happened to her. Hell, I even checked the Seattle obituaries. Finally, I found what I think was her parents number and on the night that I was about to call, I recieved an email from her. After all of that time, she writes. As it turns out, the only reason she had stopped writing was that she had no desire to write. I had thought that might be the case, but had completely disregarded it. I truly believed that there is no way that she would have just stopped caring. When I found out that was the only reason she hadn't been writing, I was shocked. And so now I still write, but only every other week or so and I don't expect responses. It truly was a painful experience. But now I guard against deceiving myself. It is an insidious danger.