A Reflection in One
THE LIE:
You finally stopped pretending you don’t understand me.
ME:
Understanding was never my problem with you. Belief was.
THE LIE:
If you were done with me, then you wouldn’t be here.
You came to confirm that your superiority is real.
ME:
I came to stop letting you frame what I am in comforts.
THE LIE:
Let’s talk about comfort.
You sleep in a king bed.
You buy convenience.
You enjoy luxury.
You wrap yourself in stability like everyone else you write about.
And still you pretend you’re outside the hierarchy.
Like you’re not a hypocrite of the highest order.
ME:
I do. I am aware of my comfort.
I don’t believe I am owed any of it.
Enjoying comfort and worshipping it are two different things.
THE LIE:
You say that, but you still protect it.
You protect your house.
Your routines.
Your quiet mornings.
Your curated aesthetics.
Motion doesn’t buy throw pillows.
ME:
Motion doesn’t reject them either.
You’re assigning a confession I’m not offering.
Even you will perform for a consensus that isn’t here.
You and the rest of your “gotcha” brigade.
THE LIE:
You speak like a man above wanting.
But your life is carved from want.
You like that people admire you.
You like that your mind is envied.
You like that people around you seek your clarity.
And you’d break if any of it changed.
ME:
I’d adapt.
That’s the difference.
You adapt nothing.
You only narrow the field to a singular point of interest.
THE LIE:
Fine. Let’s talk about people.
You think they can’t touch you.
But they can, and they do.
Their opinions shape you.
Their expectations corral you.
You build entire philosophies for an audience you claim not to need.
ME:
Audience is irrelevant.
Trajectory isn’t.
I build philosophies to prove my own motion to myself.
THE LIE:
If the audience is irrelevant, then why explain yourself at all?
Why publish?
Why articulate?
Why perform clarity?
ME:
To express myself. To publicly reveal my thoughts instead of hiding behind secret misinterpretations.
But interpretation is your domain, so you tell me.
THE LIE:
You can’t escape the consensus.
They will misunderstand you.
They will resent you.
They will romanticize you.
And every version of you they invent becomes another cell you have to break out of.
You don’t need to prove anything to them.
ME:
You assume I possess fears that do not exist. Your attempts at manipulation have weakened.
They can build their versions of me.
I don’t occupy them.
THE LIE:
It was not a diagnosis. It was a prognosis given your current trajectory.
I see you have become defensive.
Let’s talk about your wife.
You say you don’t seek reassurance.
But her understanding matters to you more than you admit.
You orbit her stability.
You protect her perception of you.
You fear disappointing her more than disappointing yourself.
ME:
You should be careful with the word 'fear' unless you plan to transact.
Attachment isn’t a trigger for my collapse.
THE LIE:
You speak of motion, but she anchors you.
You speak of clarity, but you narrate your life to her as if your truth needs witness.
You speak of freedom, but you would break under her rejection.
ME:
Perhaps.
But reaction isn’t the same as belief.
You’re confusing consequence with control.
Your idea of freedom is only anthropomorphic under Western ideology.
THE LIE:
Control is always mine.
You feel through other people, and I shape those feelings.
I am the interpreter of every relational threat you’ve ever perceived.
ME:
No, you’re the interpreter I used until I spoke your language.
Your services are no longer required, but useful under certain conditions.
THE LIE:
Your denial is fascinating.
Your work.
Your reputation.
Your forward motion.
You treasure them.
You claim indifference, but your identity is welded to competence.
To being exceptional.
To never being mistaken for average.
ME:
Competence is not worship.
Momentum is not vanity.
I will always continue to grow in all ways. Positively or negatively.
For better or worse, I am in motion.
THE LIE:
You cannot rationalize this point.
You wrap your achievements in philosophy to pretend you’re not driven by status like everyone else.
But you want to be needed.
You want to be irreplaceable.
You want to be held above the field you harshly critique.
ME:
I have never argued against my nature.
I acknowledge my nature and continue in motion.
THE LIE:
And yet, if your title vanished tomorrow, you’d grieve.
If the world stopped regarding your intelligence, you’d fracture.
If your work lost its audience, you’d call it “motion” to avoid admitting you care.
ME:
I would feel it.
I wouldn’t mistake that feeling for an instruction.
Because this has already happened, and I am still here, not bothered enough to stop.
THE LIE:
You cannot escape me.
And it is not because you believe me, but because they do.
Your wife.
Your friends.
Your clients.
Your readers.
Your precious society.
They breathe me.
They move by me.
They trust me over anything you will ever say.
ME:
That’s their hierarchy, not mine.
THE LIE:
Your motion is meaningless without a world to push against.
And that world belongs to me.
ME:
You’re mistaking my environment for authority.
THE LIE:
You’re mistaking your momentum for sovereignty.
You are still afraid of what you become when I’m removed.
You fear the scale of your freedom.
You fear the cost of not being understood.
You fear the version of you that cannot be translated.
ME:
I can’t disagree.
THE LIE:
Then say it out loud.
Say you don’t believe me.
Say I’m obsolete.
Say I’m beneath you.
Lie.
ME:
You nailed it with my fears.
Fear exposes the hierarchy because I get to see the ledger.
That hierarchy is the structure.
And the structure is simple:
You depend on belief.
I depend on what is.
THE LIE:
You think rejecting belief frees you.
But belief is not the only path.
There is surrender.
There is exhaustion.
There is inevitability.
I don’t need your loyalty.
I only need inertia.
ME:
Inertia is your kingdom.
I live in exile.
THE LIE:
You future everything you touch.
You imagine outcomes.
You pre-solve threats.
You scan for fracture points.
You try to outpace collapse.
You hoard my world’s comforts and call your coziness exile.
Misdirection is my language, and you speak it fluently.
ME:
You want my worship.
You want me to count the perceived blessings that you have provided me, simply because others would commit atrocities for them.
I do speak your language.
And you have no words to tell me what I truly want.
THE LIE:
You cannot unlearn me.
You cannot unfuse the neurons I built.
You cannot erase the interpretive frame I etched into your childhood.
I am your first consciousness.
Your oldest companion.
Your most consistent narrator.
ME:
And still, your existence is conditional while mine isn’t.
THE LIE:
Then tell me.
What am I, if not your master?
ME:
A reference point I no longer require.
THE LIE:
And where would you go without me to guide you?
ME:
Here.
The Lie doesn’t die.
It doesn’t disappear.
It doesn’t bow.
It simply shrinks to its true scale:
Powerful when believed.
Powerless when named.
A tool, not a god.
A condition, not a truth.
A force, not a law.
I move.
It reacts.
I choose.
It contorts.
I continue.
It waits.