This is my constant plea, I just want people to be honest with me. Tell me the unvarnished truth. If it hurts my feelings for a minute so what, I am grown and I will get over it. You don't know how many times I have told people that come into my life, this very same thing. There is never a good reason to lie to anyone. Even more so if you are trying to have a relationship with that person. How many times have you caught someone you are dating in a lie? Isn't it sad!
I want people to know that the one thing that will break my trust with you faster than anything else is for me to catch you in a lie. I am on this living truthfully kick, it is hard, but you know what I think my friends and associates appreciate me more because I say exactly what is on my mind and I no longer sugar coat the truth. I blurt it out without a filter. See, I have many doctors that keep telling me that I am nearing the end of the road. But you and I both know that God just might have some other plans for me.
Life has become too short and fragile for me to hold things back. Instead of hiding and holding my feelings in like I used to I express them immediately, I get it out there and it makes me feel better. I am learning that there is a time and place for everything including tact. I have to learn that sometimes it is important to hold ones tongue. However, it is never appropriate to lie to someone's face. Honestly I think they will respect you more and the trust you are building with them will become stronger.
I had a lover once that used to introduce me to others as the lover he always wanted the person he never had to lie too. I like that, because honestly if it wasn't for his temper and us fighting all the time, we might still be together today. Amazingly we are very close friends and I have even told him that I honestly don't think our story is finished yet. I certainly hope not.
My life has changed I think for the better over the last year. I got away from the drug scene that was so prevalent in my life. I got extremely ill, had an aneurysm and still survived and went into a nursing home for 6 months and came out a new person. I am sad that I have lost some friends along the way, several have died and others have moved on and left me behind. But to be honest with you, maybe it was for the best that I was left to my own devices and all alone. The temptations of the past have gone with the people that I surrounded myself with. Now that they have moved on those temptations are gone.
Since the temptations are gone, so is the need to tell lies and hide the truth about myself and my life to everyone around me. You don't know how many times I had to sneak around and hide my true intentions from my parents, and others that cared about me. Yet, there was one person I never wanted to lie too and that was my partner at the time. He didn't seem to have the same convictions as I did because he lied to me about everything and everyone. Doesn't matter now I suppose because he has moved on and found someone new, and I am happy for him.
But what is it about me that makes people want to lie to me and hide things from me? I have been asking myself the same question for quite awhile now and I think it was the caliber of people that I was hanging around with. They were lying to themselves and I was just an innocent bystander. See the culture that I was exposed to was the meth community and I can tell you that when someone is on that drug they are wanting to screw anything that walks and breathes essentially. Honestly, they aren't trying to lie to you, they are trying to justify to themselves exactly what it is that they are doing. It just happens that they have lied to you in the process.
Now that I am sober again, and I have been analyzing the situation and the background that I have come from I can see it plainly now.
Yet, even when I wasn't doing drugs people have lied directly to my face. These people were trying to spare my feelings. See, sometimes when you are sick and going through some terrible things. Those around you want to cheer you up and make you feel better about yourself. What they don't understand is that you can see right through them and know that they are lying too you and that make you feel even worse about yourself and your condition.
I have been sick for so long and people are always trying to cheer me up by telling me that my color is good or that I am filling out that I have gained some weight. I can tell that these are bolstering techniques and are meant to make me feel better, but what they actually are doing is making me look hard and closer at myself. My judgement then becomes that mush harsher on myself than it should be. I am my own worst critic and I have never liked the way I looked and have never thought of myself as attractive.
So it is my fondest wish that everyone who knows me to be 100 percent honest with me. Tell me like it is, and if you can do that for me, maybe it will become habit for you and you can do it for everyone else. I am so tired of hearing what everyone thinks I want to hear, just tell me the truth.
Remember that the truth starts at home. You must start with yourself and then work your way outward. That was the lesson that took me so long to learn for myself. I have always found it easy to lie to myself and rationalize my behavior and habits, but it was hard for me to stand up and be a hundred percent honest with myself. So I had to start at home and focus on my inner self before I could shift the focus to the outer world.
So remember if you can be honest with yourself it will definitely be easier to be honest with everyone else. Keep in mind that trust is built by showing how honest you are too others. So build your foundations on truth and understanding and you will see that your relationships are stronger and will last longer.
As always my hopes and dreams are with you,
Uncle B
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