The Biggest Lie

What’s the biggest lie that gets told? A politician saying “Vote for me because I promise to …..”? Nope. “Of course I love you!”? Nope. ….. It’s “I’m fine” . The answer that we give when people ask “How are you?”. It is made even more believable because we even smile when we say it. We know that it’s a lie, yet we repeat it time and again. What makes it worse, is that the people that we say it to know that it’s a lie too, yet almost never challenge it. What drives us to say it then? The answer to that is far more complex than you might think.

I’ve said here before that people don’t want to hear that we aren’t fine, that it still hurts. That they just want to park discussion around how we feel because they can’t cope with the answer. That is still true, but it isn’t that clean cut because we still say it to people who genuinely care. It’s my belief that they don’t challenge it because they want us to feel less down; they want it to be true. So sometimes they accept it at face value.

So why do we say it? Why do we consistently deceive our friends and even ourselves? Is it because we too want it to be true? Do we want the pain to be over so much that one day if we say it often enough it might just be true? Even when we know that we will never be fine? Sometimes I know that I fling it out there just because I’m too weary to tell the truth. That the body armour is locked in place and I’m just not going to take it off for anyone. There are those people that I know that don’t want to hear anything else, and if I said “ I’m rubbish actually” that they would change the subject faster than Donald Trump launching a legal challenge against a Biden win. These aren’t true friends, just acquaintances.

Don’t get me wrong, I have friends that reply ‘Really?’ and press for a truthful response, but they are few and far between. And as time goes on, more people gently shift from taking an interest to just bland acceptance. They’ve moved on so expect me to have done the same. We are working through the 3 year anniversaries of Evie’s illness at the moment, and to the majority of the world, that’s a lifetime and they can’t understand why we still hurt.

But deep down I do think that I sometimes say “I’m fine” simply because it is the easiest option. Maybe I’m being lazy, maybe I’m just worn down. There’s nothing insidious about it, but sometimes the truth is just too difficult to say. It draws the pain to the surface again.

What I am slowly learning is that it doesn’t matter what you say. The true friends that we have, the other bereaved parents, and those few individuals out there that have that wonderful life skill called empathy will know the truth no matter what you say, or how convincing you might be.

So …. “How are you?”