CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Truth and consequences

So truth and vulnerability are on my mind today.

I am instinctively extremely honest. It pains me to be evasive and especially to lie to people. I am not good at it and don't want to be. However, I'm noticing recently that though lying to others yanks my internal chain and I can't help noticing, I've been very accomplished at lying to myself. This must stop. Now that I've noticed A)that I do it and B)that it sucks my life force straight out of me, I'm expectant that it will cease to be an insidious little habit.

The irony is that I started out lying to myself to protect myself- okay, who knows where I started really, but from where I can pick up the trail so far I can see that these little self delusions were pretty little and designed to keep me where I wanted to be. Seemingly inconsequential details about what I was or wasn't okay with in my life. Except that I didn't notice until now that each little bitty lie laid the groundwork for another little bitty lie. And they started to knit together into a picture of someone I wasn't and didn't want to be but had carelessly let on to others that I was. And I won't even get started on how to start to go back and unravel the mess! Yeesh! So many assumptions get built on false foundations this way that when the truth comes out it astonishes.

All those moments when I held my tongue for fear of looking overly critical or overly sensitive, all those times when I laughed along with others at jokes that didn't hold the remotest amount of humor for me, each time I listened to someone go on and on and told myself they cared that it was me listening, that they would have clammed up around someone else, that when they were done I'd get a turn, every time I pretended not to feel all those things we hate to feel. So much wasted time!
For all the clichés about "to thine own self be true" I think this time I'm getting it.

From here on out, Honest Penelope is the new sheriff in town.

Help keep me honest, okay?

0 comments: