I Have Lied to You

It’s been a long time since I watched someone read a letter, and even less on a bus. Maybe they’ve lied to her, but I think I felt a sensation of joy for such an unusual detail in these “modern times.”

However, after a while, the woman reading the letter would pause, look out the window, and read the letter again—it was as if she didn’t clearly understand its content. And although I don’t know the real story of this letter’s meaning, imagining on a bus full of people, far from your destination, is very easy.

In my mind I invented a thousand stories, but none convinced me as much as the memory of a Spanish short I had seen last year, right around the days when I decided to marry who is now my wife.

But without straying from the topic, the short’s story doesn’t have that much-longed-for happy ending.

It’s regrettable, but life is constant movement, and it’s ridiculously easy to get stuck in yesterday’s details, living deceived and deceiving, trying to idealize the other person while simultaneously molding them to our tastes.

I don’t know how the story of the woman on the bus ended, but if we’re going through a situation similar to that short, although painful and strong, it will always be better to stop, breathe, and say:

I have lied to you, and I have lied to myself.

Dear Cristina: I’ve decided to write you this letter because you deserve to know that nothing is your fault—simply everything has changed and I don’t know how to tell myself why.

I adore you but no, I can’t continue with you.

The truth is I’ve lied to you and that’s not the worst part—the worst part is I’ve been doing it since day one… and the most ridiculous thing is I’ve also lied to myself believing I had finally found you.

I adored how you’d go from angry to in love in a matter of seconds, I loved your skin and the smell of moisturizer every time you hugged me.

I adored the way you said yes to all my crazy ideas, I couldn’t live without your constant hugs…

I loved when you made fun of my silly things and that made you burst into a thousand smiles, I enjoyed doing nothing, killing time, walking, kissing—I adored so many things about you… in contrast, now

I hate your sudden mood changes, I detest when you put on that moisturizer and touch me with sticky skin, I hate your lack of initiative and that you say yes to everything, it overwhelms me that you always want to be glued to me and it infuriates me that you make fun of my things and then laugh, it bores me to be doing nothing wasting time.

That’s why I can’t continue with you, because I made that error everyone makes of believing you were who I wanted you to be; of, without knowing you, telling you that you were the woman of my life, of thinking you were my one in a million because my desire to find you was greater than my desire to be with you.

But you haven’t been the only one deceived, because I also believed you were forever, that you’d be my before and after, what I’d always dreamed of. I know it will happen to me again—I’ll lie to myself again, you’ll all seem like the previous ones at first sight and everything will seem incredible again.

I see myself lying to myself again, making mistakes, but no longer with you, no longer against you.

I’m very sorry, I wish you the best Marcos