The Lie I Lived With
| You've been getting my emails about relationships and purpose for a while now. Today, I want to share something different - the story that shaped everything I teach. It's about a lie I told for over a decade. A lie that cost me half of my life. And ultimately, the thing that taught me the most about what it means to live and love authentically. ## Where It Started I was 7 when I first learned that being myself wasn't safe. My father noticed I stuttered. My mother made jokes about it running in his family. That small moment taught me something devastating: there was something wrong with the way I was. At my all-boys military school, I developed my first survival strategy. During reading sessions, instead of risking the stutter that came with reading unprepared, I'd pretend not to be paying attention. I'd read from a completely different part of the text. The teachers punished me for not focusing. I got detentions. But I didn't have to stutter in public. I chose shame over vulnerability. It seemed like a win. This was my first lesson in trading authenticity for safety. It wouldn't be my last. ## The Accident That Changed Everything When I was 12, I was expelled from school for something I barely understood. My friend wanted a battery for a science project from an abandoned British car on campus. I was just standing there talking to him when a professor accused us of stealing. My friend gave a fake name. I gave my real one. Two weeks later, only I was called to the principal's office. Only I was expelled. My family's status, their pride, their social standing - gone because of my honesty in a moment where a lie might have saved me. The irony wasn't lost on me: telling the truth got me punished while my friend's lie set him free. ## The Cover-Up After the expulsion, my family came to America on visitor visas. What was supposed to be a summer visit became permanent when my father's immigration application was processing and he accidentally left the country - invalidating our entire case. We were undocumented. We were starting over. And we were ashamed. So we lied. We told everyone our residency was approved, that everything was fine. But the family lie wasn't enough for me. As a Muslim immigrant kid with a stutter and a funny accent, I felt invisible, unwelcome, wrong. So I created someone else entirely. ## Becoming Someone Else I told people I was from England. Then Australia. I memorized streets in Blackpool (chosen because it was obscure enough that no one would know it well). I created an elaborate backstory about moving around so much that I couldn't make friends. It worked. People were interested in the worldly kid with the exotic background. For the first time, I felt seen, desired, worthy of attention. The lie became my identity. I told it to make friends, attract girls, break ice at parties. Whenever my ordinary life felt too small or shameful, I had this grand story to retreat into. ## The Price of Performance Years passed. The lie became so detailed, so practiced, that something terrifying happened: I started believing it myself. I could visualize growing up in England more clearly than my actual childhood in Bangladesh. I was replacing my real memories with fictional ones. But the real cost came when I met the woman who would become my wife. She was British. And when I wanted her to meet my parents, I panicked. If she spoke to my family, my entire story would unravel. So I kept the woman I married away from the people who raised me. I was choosing my lie over my life. ## The Breaking Point One night in Victoria, BC, after taking mushrooms with my then wife and now ex-wife, I couldn't think about anything except this story I'd been telling for over a decade. I stayed awake all night, sitting by the window, carrying the weight of who I really was versus who everyone thought I was. When she found me in the morning, she knew something was wrong. She sat across from me and waited. I told her everything. I cried. She cried. She held me as I explained how the lie started as protection and became a prison. ## What I Learned About Real Love That moment taught me something I now share with everyone I work with: Real love can only exist in the presence of real truth. No matter how hard we try, our subconscious will bring up all lies that are not dealt with integrity. A life built on performance, on being who you think someone wants you to be, is a house built on sand. It might feel stable for a while, but it will always be fragile. The relationships that last, that nourish, that actually make you feel seen - those happen when you show up as exactly who you are, flaws and fears and all. This is why I start all my work with self-integration, which is my way of radical saying self-acceptance. You can't love authentically from an inauthentic place. You can't receive real love when you're performing a version of yourself. ## The Work Continues I'm still telling people the truth about my story. After a decade of lies, it's taking time to come clean with everyone in my life. Some days I forget who knows and who doesn't. Sometimes I tell someone my truth only to learn I've already shared it with them before. I thought coming clean would feel euphoric. Instead, it feels like life - messy, imperfect, real. But here's what I gained: the ability to be loved for who I actually am. The freedom to stop performing. The deep peace that comes from not having to remember which version of myself I'm supposed to be today. ## Why I'm Sharing This I work with people who want to love better and live with more purpose. This story is the foundation of everything I teach because it shows what's at stake. When you hide who you are - whether through elaborate lies or just by not sharing your real thoughts and feelings, the real you - you rob yourself of the chance to be truly known. And when you're not truly known, you can't be truly loved. Every technique I share, every practice I teach, every uncomfortable conversation I encourage - it all comes back to this: the courage to be seen as you actually are. That's where real love begins. That's where purpose gets clear. That's where life stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling like coming home. The work isn't easy. But it's the only work that matters. --- If this resonated, hit reply and tell me: What truth have you been avoiding? What would change if you stopped performing and started being real? I read every response. Ish |
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