Julio's Musings

Lies travel fast. It’s a strange little fact of life. I suppose that’s even more true these days with how quickly information travels through the Internet. I swear every couple of weeks a new celebrity is thought to be dead because of rumors that spread through twitter and Facebook. It’s the bad that comes along with the good of how quickly important news can reach everyone.

In the movie Easy A, Olive Penderghast tells her best friend that she lost her virginity when she hadn’t. She didn’t think anything of it until another girl overheard her and spread the lie through the school. So, everyone believed Olive was sexually active now. She ends up telling the truth to another guy in the school. This person is being harassed constantly in school because he is gay. He comes up with the idea to pretend he and Olive had sex in order to get the school believing he is straight and, therefore, stop harassing him. Olive goes along with this plan not only to help her friend, but to also keep up her own lie. She was getting attention that she kind of liked after being fairly invisible in her school. What she did for her friend spread to other guys who would pay her with gift cards to simply say that they messed around in some way. Obviously, the lie became bigger and bigger until she got the reputation of being the school slut. Ultimately, Olive had to stop the lies and set the record straight.

Lies travel fast. When we start the lies ourselves and continue to repeat them, the lies start to become true to us. Olive got so caught up in keeping up the lie that she started to believe the reputation she was getting. I know I’m guilty of believing lies I say about myself. There have been plenty of times where I say how much I suck at this or that, how I’ll never amount to anything, how I suck as a person, and so on. Even though I knew those weren’t true (and having people yell at me for saying these untrue things), eventually I started to actually believe those things. I started to believe my own lies. I would use any sort of thing that went wrong for me, no matter how small or unimportant, as a way to propagate those lies.

So what’s the point of all of this? The point is to tell all of you to stop telling lies about yourself. If you have been saying negative things about yourself, stop now before you start believing them. There’s a difference between understanding things you can improve upon and just beating yourself down for no reason with things that aren’t true. As Pink (or P!nk as she spells it these days) sings “You’re so mean. When you talk about yourself, you are wrong. Change the voices in your head. Make them like you instead.” That’s right, folks; you have to make your own inner voice like you instead of hating on you. So remember: you aren’t stupid; you are important; you aren’t a good (or bad) person who does bad things; you are intelligent; you are amazing; you cannot be replaced by your friends; you will not be alone forever; things will get better; you will get through the pain you hide; you will get through school; you would be missed if you were gone; and most importantly, you are loved a lot.