We all lie. Why do we lie? Well, we all have our own 'reasons' behind doing so. Even our 'reasons' are not set in concrete. I can not tell you why your teenager lies to you, why you lie to your boss, why your parents lie to your children... I can't speak for anyone else but I will try to help you understand from a teenagers point of view as to how we justify the lies we sometimes feed.

I'll take you back to the beginning of my childhood and give you a brief in-sight as to why I am who I am today.

Quick timeline of the devastating events in my childhood...

age 4: my parents divorced.

age 5: molested for the first time.

age 5 - 10: molested by 7 different people (1 female, 6 males) during this period.

age 10: molested for the last time (by my Step Father).

age 12 - 16: high school - everyone gets bullied. People found out my past and decided to blame me for it. Kids punished me by pushing me down flights of concrete stairs, throwing objects at my head, dragging me along brick walls and kicking me while I was down, just to name a few.

age 16: once I graduated high school, I left home.

I was born in 1990. Today, I am 18 years of age, turning 19 in August 2009.

So, what does all of this have to do with the reasons behind lying? It has everything to do with it.

I don't lie much (nope, no lie there). The most common reason behind why we lie, I believe, is to protect. Your children may not tell you something because they are trying to protect themselves, someone else, or even you. Now-a-days, protecting someone is the only reason why I lie but I do so with great, strict justification. "Yeah right!", you say. When I say I do so with great, strict justification, I mean I do not lie to protect the guilty (as an example). If someone is in great danger of being hurt and/or injured, I say something. If someone asked me if I think I am a good person, I would answer, "yes".

Now, back to how my childhood plays a big part in the reasons as to why I lie! Our past shapes us. We can not deny that. Out of all the events in my childhood, the one that scarred me the most was my Step Father molesting me. Not because he did so, but because my mother believed him over me. Let me paint a bit of a picture of that night.

I can not be specific of dates or times but as I recall, it was about 7pm on a week night during winter - I know this because it was cold and I had just had a shower and decided to curl up next to the heater to warm up. I remember more than I would have ever expected to - like that I know that Cartoon Network was on TV. My brother, Tom was in his room playing with his matchbox cars (he was 8 at the time). Mum wasn't home because she was doing night study at Uni - studying to be a teacher. My Step Father, whom at the time wasn't married to my Mother and we had only known him for a few months, was babysitting us. He lived with us, and Tom and I trusted him undoubtably. Why? Because we didn't have any reason not to. That night, after coming out of the shower, dressed only in a towel, heading out to the loungeroom to curl up next to the heater, I came across my Step Father. It all happened very fast and next thing I knew, I was being held upside down, struggling to get free. He held me there and it was at that point he violated me. By that point I had frozen and I remember wanting to move but not being able to. It was all over in a few minutes, he laughed, smiled at me, and put me down. About a minute later, I unfroze, grabbed my towel and ran like hell to my brothers room. I told Tom what happened as I cried. He told me he would protect me and he then locked his bedroom door and we hid under his bed until Mum got home. When Mum arrived home, she asked me why I looked so scared and upset. I told her and my Step Father denied the accusation. Mum said I must have had it all wrong and that I was mistaken. She believed my Step Father and to this day, he has a hold over me that gives him invisible power to intimidate not only me, but my brother as well.

Unfortunately, although I know this lesson not to be true, at the age of 10 I learnt that parents don't believe their children during a time when their children need to be believed the most. From that lesson, I took with me for the rest of my childhood that my Mother was only going to believe anything that I said, if it was a lie. I had to live under a roof that consisted of a brother that loved me more than anything, a mother that took my words as nothing but make-believe and a step father that thought he could get away with murder. I never told my father, and I believe now that I should have. But, I was a 10 year old girl that was told she was wrong. What was I meant to believe?

I missed my opportunity to report the incident, the day my first little half-brother came along in 2002. Now, 9 years on from the tragic event, I have 5 little half-brothers. I love them more than anything in this world and I don't have the guts, nor the lack of heart to have their father taken away from them. I would rather suffer alone, than have 5 innocent little boys suffer too. Their father is a monster, and even though I feel they are in some form of danger, I just hope that he only has a 'thing' for little girls - because he doesn't have any - the only one he had access to, was me.

Naturally, people want to get to know people. You don't want to get to know me. Yes, I am a good person but who I am at home and who I am outside, are two different people - both good people, but completely different. Who knows me best? No one. Not even me. I don't desire to figure me out.

If you don't trust your family members on their word, you are paranoid. If you don't trust them on their word because they have lied about something similiar before, you are somewhat justified but no where near better off. You lie to them. They lie to you. You love them. They love you. We make dodgy judgement calls sometimes, but that is what judgement is - dodgy. We can never be sure if someone is lying to us or not, without the proof right before our very eyes. And even then, the proof doesn't prove that they have been lying to us all along. It's not a matter of "How Could They Lie To Me?!", it's a matter of, "Why Did They Lie To Me?!" and sometimes along with that answer, comes forgiveness.