Growing Up With Lies

Delta Winds: A Magazine of Student Essays
A Publication of San Joaquin Delta College
2004

Growing Up With Lies

Katie Williams

When I was seven, my mom sat me and my brother and sister down and told us she had cancer and had six months to live. My mom is still alive today. My mother is the biggest liar I know. Even today, as a grandmother of twelve, she lies about almost everything.

Growing up with a mother for a liar was hard. I learned early in life how lies could have devastating repercussions. Due to my mom's lies I had to grow up without my family. I had a lot of emotional problems as a teenager. I had to learn not to get attached to people because I never stayed in the same place for a long time. Even as an adult, I have a hard time trusting people. I found out my mom was a liar when I was nine. I came home from school one day to find my mother having an affair. She told me the man was just a friend, but two weeks later we moved in with him. That was when I knew my mom was a liar.

Earlier, I remember my mom telling us lies. She once told us that she was redecorating Clint Eastwood's house. She took us to Oxford Circle where she said he lived and showed us a house. I remember being excited and wanting to meet him. We begged my mom to get an autograph, but she never did. I found out she was lying from a neighbor who said Clint Eastwood did not live in Stockton. My mom never brought it up again. She said she had to quit working because she was sick and was unable to decorate houses anymore.

My mom gave me up when I was ten. I lived with my grandmother until I was eleven. Then I was shipped out of town to live with my aunt. While I lived with my aunt, my mom used to call me periodically and tell me to pack my stuff, and that she wanted me home. I would pack my stuff and wait. Two months passed before I would hear anything from her. When I asked her about me coming home, she would tell me that she never said that. After a while, I got tired of her lies and stopped accepting her phone calls.

When I moved back to Stockton, I would speak to my mom on occasions. Every time I saw or talked to her I caught her in lies. She lied about buying houses or being sick from some disease that I had never even heard of. When I confronted her about a lie, she acted as if she could not remember telling me those things. The most recent lie my mother has told was that she lost her memory. She even had the nurses believing it. We caught her when we brought my niece Estella to the hospital to visit her. We called my niece Estella "Wella" as a nickname. We introduced my niece to my mom as Estella; she then turned to her and said, "Hi Wella Wella." We all knew she was lying. We all got quiet and one by one left the hospital room. I have never confronted my mom about it. I did not talk to my mom after that for a year. I was hurt that my mom would lie about something so serious.

It is hard as an adult to know you don't have a mother you can depend on for things. I can't take my kids to her house for her to baby-sit or even to have Sunday dinners with. I barely speak to my mother. The only time she ever calls me is when the rest of the family won't speak to her because they have caught her in a lie. I once confronted my mom about the lies she told. She blames it on her childhood. She had a mother that was a liar and taught her how to lie. I'm glad in some ways that my mom gave me up. I think if I had stayed with her I would have ended up like her. I don't know if my mom will ever change. I still catch her in lies today. She is and will always be the biggest liar I will ever know.