I'm at a really cool cafe having an adult milkshake. I tried adult milkshakes a few years ago and they're just so my thing.

This one's pretty strong, so now must be a good time to work on my blog, right?

I had a really perfect last few days at work, and I have tomorrow off, so it's been a really good week. Also, it's Monday. I also went through and read my blog up until now – it's not what I thought it would be but I'm impressed with myself and how I've kept up with it, and how I write.

Everyone has told me I am a good writer always, although I never had any idea what that meant and still don't. I write like I talk, and no one has ever said I'm a good talker – on the contrary. My ex told me I was retarded and impossible to converse with. Ha.

I also checked my stats for this blog, something I wasn't planning on doing. I think I have readers O.o

Hi! I didn't know if this would actually be something people like. But I mean I'm glad.

I have wanted to do something like this for years, ever since my life started falling apart and I needed something to keep me consistent. I like having a place to write about things I don't understand, or people who say things that sound silly to me but I want to keep my job so I don't say that.

Peterson says it's best to tell the truth in life, or at least not to lie. I like this. It's good that people have recognized the value of truth. But how can I move through life telling the truth? How are you supposed to do that?

I have been practicing saying what I think at work, because he says after it gets worse, it gets much better. You lose your soul when you lie, he says. I know this is true. You can feel yourself slipping away when you say something you don't believe. You can feel the incongruity of it all and you feel that you are less connected.

I try not to lie if I can help it. Sometimes I find myself telling little lies for no reason, by habit, and then feeling awful about them but not wanting to bring them up because then it would look like it was a big deal. Like the age of your ex or how you got fired from your last job, or how much you weigh. Like why would you lie about that? But it would only bring more attention to it if you fixed it with the person you lied to. You know?

That happens to me sometimes. I don't really lie about anything important to anyone. But when I do, I'm too good at it. I have made the people closest to me believe I have tells. On purpose. So that I have a tell when I tell a lie that I want them to know is a lie. But when I lie for real, I really lie. No one can ever tell unless I want them to. It scares me sometimes. I'll think about a lie I might tell, and I get scared because I know no one would ever know. The damage that could do.

So I overcompensate and I say too much truth. I tell people things they wouldn't want to know. I tell people things they wish they could un-know. I take away my own opportunities to lie. I say things that are so starkly true and exact that now I cannot lie about them later.

I sense that I would be excellent at manipulating people. I sense that it is the same gift that makes me excellent at salesmanship. At communicating with someone's inner voices, not their outer ones. That's all it really is. I don't need you to believe you need this thing. I need your mind to believe it.

I want to use it for good. I know many people don't, and don't even know the difference.

When I'm thinking of lying, I truth as hard as I can. I dig my heels in. I wrap an arm around my neck. I hold myself there, and open my mouth, and say anything I can but the lie – even if the truth is worse. I say something so truthful it feels like I'm taking a piece of my own soul and holding it up as a shield.

I'm trying to write a blog about everything that's happened to me, and who I am now because of it, but the biggest thing that ever happened to me – the worst thing that ever happened to me, consequently – was my ex-husband, so he is inevitably woven into everything I believe. He's a piece of everything I detest and I'm convinced that at least half of my personality is in spite of him.

I have begun understand why people who were married tend to go be with someone who was married. Even my older coworkers can't comprehend most of what I tell them. Even those who have been with someone for years. The repercussions. It's inconceivable and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but anyone who has never had to grieve this way would never be able to understand. Why the feeling of not ever being good enough will never really leave me.

Never get married. And if you do, never get divorced. If you don't get divorced, you won't go looking for the love of your life. And they'll never get the chance to wonder why you have such terrible nightmares, and why you will always hesitate, and why you believe the world had a plan for you and you fought against it and you wonder if that makes you reprehensible because shouldn't you have just been grateful for your plan when plenty of people have horrible plans? And you won't spend the rest of your life truly believing you're hurting them every moment they're with you because don't they deserve someone who would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS leave the one they love? No matter what? Won't you vow that to them again someday if everything goes to plan? How will they believe you? How could you ever make those vows again now knowing how fragile they are and that no one means them and especially not you because you broke them once and you know that once you break something it's easier to break it over and over again? How could you risk it again? How could you ever have children? How could you have more? How could you risk being such a monster but putting their lives in your hands?

That's how it feels on the bad nights. Like my path was miserable and dire and there was no hope at the end of it, but it was straight, and I could see the end of it because it was all one direction. Every night was the same. Every morning. Every waking hour. It was downwards, and darker the further you went, and there was nothing good anywhere along it; it was my path. Now I am on a new path, and it's happy and full of life and light. But it twists and turns and goes upside down and through portals, and everything I see is new and amazing and fun, dazzling, and there's no telling where it ends.