Sisterly advice

Big Brother Ghoul is fed up with Little Sister Living Death.

The problem, he says, is that I am so awfully positive! He is all She left me! How could she do that? There is nothing left for me in life!

Then I'm straight back there with, Think of this as an opportunity! And all Big Brother Ghoul wants to do, is bash me round the head with a wooden plank like we were kids again, then crawl away into a corner and die.

But, Big Brother Ghoul, look! I'm alive! Only on the outside, but it still counts, right? Yay me! So it figures that Grit's top ten tips must be good for something, so long as you add eat, sleep, take happy pills.

What Big Brother Ghoul needs to learn how to do, is to lie. He is too much in the way of truth and honesty. He needs to lie best to himself and thus he will keep the whole show going.

Lies are excellent because half of a lie is embedded in the horrible reality, but the other half is free to take shape and change according to circumstance. That is the bit you can make up as you go. It is your only freedom. Of course you don't have to believe your own lies. You know the fibs you tell yourself, of course you do. You're not an idiot! But retaining the capacity for delusion, for imagination, for fantasy, for exploration of all other, that is the special gift of the accomplished liar.

Think of it like this, like the butterfly, trapped in the mud. One wing is caught in the sticky dark goo and can't ever be free. But the other wing is beating and beating and, for the briefest of moments, you might imagine that the strength and power of that wing will lift the whole life free. You can believe it for the most fleeting of moments. That's the power of the lie. Better than the truth, better than the reality, I tell Big Brother Ghoul.

Big Brother Ghoul looks straight at me, like I am the mad one, then off he goes, to find a plank of wood.