Personal Connection #1

In order to understand the use of deception in the play, I have been thinking about some personal experiences which relate to deception in my own life. The first one is definitely not something I talk about a lot, which is probably why it is so successful. I have become quite proficient when it comes to deceiving others. That is not something I am proud of, by the way, but it is necessary ( as I mentioned in my previous post, deception always seems justifiable) and it had become something not only I, but also various members of my family rely on. I know that it is wrong to deceive people who are so important in my life, but weighing the two extremes and knowing that there is no happy medium, I have made my own decision as to what I need to do to keep people happy and protect what little peace I have and treasure in my life. Please, don't judge me too harshly, as this is kind of hard to explain, and as completely crazy as it may seem, it does have its purpose.
Let's first examine who I am deceiving. In this example, it is a lot of people, and when I think about it, I feel completely horrible, but I know I think it has a purpose. I guess I will find out in the long run. The victims of my deception in this case are my immediate family and my church family (that's how I will refer to them because a lot of the time they are like family to me and I wouldn't want to imagine my life without them).
Is it malicious deception? Not in my opinion. It's purpose is keeping the peace and while I am lying (by omission), I try to keep it to a minimum.
Here's the story : There are a lot of details I will keep to myself to respect the wishes of privacy of some of the people in this story. If there are any details you think are missing, please ask me. I hope the information I provide will be sufficient to ascertain a basic enough understanding of the situation so that my point may be made. Anyway, back to the point I was trying to make in the first place. In my home I have a lot of responsibilities because there are some things certain people in my family cannot do. I am responsible for a lot of the cleaning, some of the cooking, scheduling, and educational, as well as emotional support. It can be a tough job, I'm not going to lie about that, but every once in a while it seems worthwhile. There are other times when it is simply exasperating. People don't cooperate,technology has a mind of its own, and oh my goodness, it's raining again and I finally had time to take care of the lawn. I find myself frustrated a lot, and hurt by the things people do and say, but I have a responsibility to these people to keep calm and unemotional. There must be a voice of reason 100% of the time. That's me. Emotional release for me is writing, not talking to people, not yelling, but writing. I deceive the people I love so that I can keep going and so that they know that there is someone strong they can rely on. It does work, most of the time.
The harder part though, is deceiving my church family. A lot of times, I am very emotional at church, which is okay as long as I am sitting in the second row of the choir and no one can see how different things affect me. It is important though, that I "save face" in order to deflect questions so I don't have to lie. My family has friends at church, and I know they are good people, and I don't want to damage the relationships they have built with them (even if they're not entirely truthful).
This is my justification for deception: it is necessary. Don't get me wrong, I hate it more than anything when I have to lie to these people who love me like their own family, and call me crazy, but even though I see how illogical it is, I continue to do it because people rely on it. That's the thing with deception, once it starts, it doesn't stop.
I saw this in Macbeth. As soon as the deception started with killing King Duncan, there were things that needed to be done to make sure that it stayed secret, like the murder of Banquo. That was done to prevent the secret from getting out. It was unjustifiable and horrible, but it seemed justifiable to the ones being deceptive, under the circumstances.
Again, please don't judge. I haven't been able to give the full story as this was hard enough for me to disclose and I hope that it won't need to continue for too much longer, but right now, this is how it has to be, sensible or not.