Honesty, part 1

Honesty is a tricky thing. People don't respect you if you don't have it, but sometimes people don't want all of the honesty that you have. Let me re-phrase that: sometimes people don't want all of the honesty that I have!

I have learned over the years that I am what mostly people consider . . . hmmm, how should I put this? Lacking in subtlety. Blunt like a two-by-four. Brutally honest. I definitely have had to learn when to lay that on people and when not to. Ahh, tact. I see how it can help people hear each other better, but I also sometimes just want to get to the POINT. I can credit my job with forcing on me the fine art of being honest while also being careful to bring the person I'm consulting with along with me for the ride.

I actually didn't realize how much I prized the sometimes difficult fact of my brutal honesty until the last few years.  I had two really hard moments with two people whose opinion mattered to me more than I thought it did. In one instance someone I worked with accused me of lying to him (and I hadn't). We had been struggling with each other both in our friendship and in working together but I was just so shocked he would accuse me of dishonesty as a way out of dealing with that, that I couldn't think what to say. I got up and walked out and later had to explain that I felt that if he didn't trust me, then everything else I said was meaningless.  (And then I cried.  A lot.) It was a shocking situation, because what had started the whole thing was me being honest with him (at my manager's request) about my concerns about some of his recent decisions and behavior.

The second was with someone who I am close with in my personal life who claimed I was a terrible liar and always had been. Again, I was shocked. It's hard to be told, on the one hand, that my honesty is too blunt, and then on the other that it is lacking. Which is what I ended up saying. (I later told this person that I was known pretty strongly as someone who could be counted on to be honest even if it wasn't welcome so I wasn't prepared to accept their proclamation that because they didn't like what I had said it meant I was lying. And then I told them that if they called me a liar again they could expect to not hear from me or see me for an exceedingly long time . . . And then I cried. A lot. Are you seeing a pattern here?)

But this isn't about those stories. It's about what those experiences taught me. What I realized is that my honesty, two-by-four and all, is something really valuable to me. It's part of me, and part of what I rely on in myself and interactions with others. Even when the starkness of it catches people off guard, it matters to me to be able to count on that.

So why is it sometimes so hard to be honest with myself? I mean, if I'm going to deal with Empty Calories in my life I'm going to have to be able to take a long, hard look in the metaphorical mirror. I need to be able to tell hard truths to myself. Pssst! Christie, you might seriously have outgrown your job. What do you want to be when you grow up? Hey, you there in the mirror of truth-telling, when you buy a box of Cheezits, you eat ALL of them! You live alone, so no one else is there! Ummm, hi. You suck at choosing men. That kind of honesty. Yeaaaah. Don't say I didn't warn you that my honesty can be uncomfortable at times.

I struggle with looking myself in the eye after eating the whole box of the aforementioned Cheezits. As though, if I don't think about it, it didn't happen. Then I fold up the box and put it in my recycling as quickly as possible. It's ridiculous. It got to the point that I not only had to stop buying Cheezits, but had to stop even going down the aisle they live in at the store; a kind of wiping them from my personal existence. Then I started crushing out on flavored microwave popcorn and the cycle started all over again. ( It was at about this point that I decided I needed to get some help to avoid a scary level of food addiction, by the way.) But the lying to myself wasn't just the selective memory about my food sins, it started way before that. It starts when I pick something up that I know I will feel guilty about, don't need, something that will derail my good eating, or one of the many things I am unable to be moderate about (pizza, potato chips, Cheezits, popcorn, chocolate, ice cream, bagels, my mom's lasagna, Cheezits, quiche, anything fried - especially calamari, marzipan, and did I mention Cheezits?). I tell myself, "well, I can be a grown up about this. I can ration this out. Yeah, sure I can." Every. Time.

Lies!

But there's this thing about me. If I'm writing, I can't bear to be even a hair less than totally, slavishly, honest. It's like I won't dishonor the act of writing by being anything other than truthful. So, if I have to write to really look hard at myself, so be it. Hence, my food log, this blog, and the emails I send to my health coach.

So here goes, some difficult honesty, served up for myself.

• I'm afraid of the dark. Like, I really don't want to be alone in the dark, even in my house.
• I hate all cardio except for swimming
• Once, in grad school, we had to throw a welcome picnic. I took a portion of the budget and shopped and planned to make all the side dishes. When I opened up the dill, it had little red bugs in it, that I didn't see until I added the herb to the other ingredients in the blender. I was so broke I couldn't replace those four ingredients so I hit "liquify" and just made the salad. (I have not been able to eat dill or even have it in my spice cabinet since)
• I might not have made it through my second Master's without vodka
• I live alone. So, if the Cheezits (frozen pizza, fries, popcorn, etc.) come into the house I'm the one who eats them. All of 'em
• I might always live alone since I have tragic taste in relationships.
• Which I'd be fine with (and by fine, I mean disappointed but able to get over for the most part) if it didn't make it so difficult for me to have/adopt children
  
  Well, Christie, how did that feel?
  
  Hmmmm. Well, I wish I could be rewarded for this with some magically delicious and yet amazingly calorie free quiche, but other than that . . . less painful than say, the 200 squats my trainer and I did on Sunday.
  
  Ok then, and those squats were good for you. Is it possible that this honestly you like to dish up for others could be good for your relationship with yourself too?
  
  Uhhh, sure. But is there any word on that quiche? Or, if that's too hard. How about some Cheezits?