Unscalable Walls

Have you ever tried to scale a smooth, lubricated wall? The wall is immense and almost vertical, too high to grapple. You have no purchase. You try, but fail. At some point, you accept it’s there and cannot be taken down once it’s been built. There are tiny steps you can take to chip away at the wall, but no matter how much you try, you gain little ground. It might have been better never to have tried to scale it, but once you did, you couldn't undo the experience, even if you accepted that there was little you could do to reach its summit. This is how lies feel.

The Monster

Lies ruin everything they touch. Once a lie is spoken, it cannot be undone. Not even forgiveness changes the aftereffects. No matter how many times the liar says, “I am sorry,” it’s out there, and its consequences are long-reaching and forever.

For the receiver of lies, the doubt never goes away. Never. A person can forgive the other and actually mean it, but there will always be a speculative component to everything moving forward in the relationship. Something inside will always wonder whether what the person who lied says or does is truthful.

I never trusted my father after years of being burned by his incessant lying. It didn’t matter whether it was a little lie, a lie of omission, or a highly calculated one; I didn’t trust him. It took me years to reach that conclusion, but I am naive when it comes to trusting people.

Lose Something?

I don’t expect people to lie to me. I just don’t. Most people do. I get it, and I understand that it is accepted behavior, but I don’t think that way, even with the experiences I have had. But I don’t, and most of the time, I default to believing someone until they prove they are not trustworthy.

That is why I found it so devastating when I realized the people closest to me were lying to me. I knew my dad was lying or embellishing 99% of the time, but my sibling was not.

She and I are thick as thieves. I never thought there were lies between us, since we shared the same life experiences with our father and mother and protected each other. We always have. She and I never lied to one another, and now I had to question it.

I found out one day that my dad had married and had not said a word about it to me.

The Sharp Blade

As some of you might recall, he pulled that nicety in Texas when we went away for a weekend with a woman we had met once and came back with a wife and stepson. I wrote about that dumpster fire in Round Trip Tickets.

Day in and day out, for over a year, my dad never once mentioned that he had married again. He married the woman who had come for a visit with him and had connived to steal something from my home. Inconsequential as the item was, it was the last time I trusted my father. But the fact that all this time had gone by while he hid an important event like marriage was shocking. Old habits die hard. Mine, not his. I trusted. My bad.

But one day, I was talking with my sister when she let it slip, calling her his wife. I thought I had heard wrong.

I said, “What did you just say?” The phone line went quiet, just long enough to know she was caught and trying to figure out how to undo it. There was no way.

I asked her what she had said again, and she replied with a question of her own.

“What do you mean?” I was not having it. I knew she was cat-and-mousing the issue, and I told her she knew exactly what I meant by the word wife she used to refer to the woman.

She played it poorly, saying she had told me he was getting married and that he had gotten married. She never had. Dad never had. She knew the entire time and never said a word until the slip-up.

You see, no matter how good a liar you are, no matter how simple or complex the lie, and no matter how well the tracks are covered, the lie wants its due: its spot in the limelight. It always comes out. Most of the time, it comes out at the most inopportune times, and when it does, the fallout is vast. Lies cast a wide net.

Vertical Glass Wall

For me, it once again solidified my father's character and integrity. For my relationship with my sister, it changed it forever. I could not trust her. With what? Does it matter? When someone lies, even about something small, it calls everything else into question. And it has. I was never the same.

I forgave them both. I understood why Dad was the way he was, and I knew why my sister did it. She fears people leaving her life. She had to keep Dad because she feared his anger if she didn’t keep his lies. With me, she knew I would never hold it against her or withhold forgiveness. Siblings forgive each other for pretty much anything.

We may get upset with one another, but at the end of the day, a sibling is your go-to for everything, especially the intimate things that require some background or history to make sense.

Even so, I never trusted her the same way again. How can I? I still come down on the side of believing her, for the most part. I know she lies, and has since then, about insane and important issues, but those are her reasons to keep. Not mine. She is still the same, and maybe always was. I love her all the same.

Never the Same

What I do know is this. I don’t share with her the same way. I don’t open up the same way. I don’t lie to her. I never have, and I have the scars on my heart from the times that caused severe rifts between us. Times when we didn’t speak for months because of my honesty, but I won’t lie to make someone feel better or to validate what I can’t.

The shift in our relationship is obvious to me. I am not sure whether she feels it or knows it is there. It is there. It has caused a sliver of estrangement I can’t deny. I am not open. I am not with her anymore. I am skeptical of everything she says, too.

See, even though I love her to death and would literally lay down my life for hers, I cannot scale that cliff. The chasm is too great. There is no way to undo broken trust. I don’t care who you are or how vehemently you argue it; if you think about it, no one can. You can argue that distrust can be dismissed and trust restored, but in your heart you always know there’s a chance they’re lying again. And that makes the climb all the more difficult.

It is far better to speak the truth than to lie. A person cannot deal with a lie. How can you? A lie obscures the truth, making it hard to grasp and deal with. You can’t process what you don’t know is true. The truth may hurt or be ugly, but you can deal with it and overcome it, no matter what it is. Lies always loom like a bad specter. It hides in the recesses, digging up the doubt you’d like to put away but can’t quite banish.

I’ve heard it asked, “What’s worse, telling the truth that will hurt someone, or lying to spare them?” You spare them nothing. Lies corrupt irreversibly. Truth can be overcome and can actually bond people. Lies never do.

(Published on Spilled Ink-Substack, August 2026)

Thank you for sticking through it- clap or like if you are still awake, and share this. Did I mention I love coffee?   

Catch me on Patreon, Substack, Beehiiv, Medium, Vocal, Wattpad, or WordPress. Dealer's choice! Check me out on Social Media too via Linktree or my website, Ink and Echo. And if you'd like to support my coffee habit, you can do that on Ko-fi too.

#trust #relationships #lies #family #change

Want another taste? Here is a flavorful one:

Unscalable Walls ©2026 Spilled Ink for Ink and Echo. All rights reserved.