On the Benefits of Honesty

A few months ago I ran across Dr. Carmella's Guide to Understanding the Introvert. I found it incredible and 100% accurate. I can't figure out who wrote it, but I love it! Out of the whole thing, though, the picture above has stayed with me.

I've been living in "happy town" for several weeks now. I've been absolutely surrounded by an amazing support system. WELL, this weekend I'm away. Off with a bunch of weird theater people who live in a parallel plane that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I'm isolated. I'm alone with myself. I'm lonely.

My former bubble wasn't healthy. BUT.... in a way, it did protect me. At least that's what I thought. When you keep yourself isolated from people, you hurt, but you don't get hurt by people as much. Being hurt by people is what drove me into the bubble in the first place. I made the conscious choice years ago to close myself off... to let very few in.

Sometimes I waver. I'm really enjoying letting people in. This morning, though, my feelings got hurt. I responded. I responded by isolating myself and drowning my sorrows in fat and calories. I dove right back into that bubble without any thought. I verbally punched the person who hurt me. It was awful. I retreated. Yuck! I didn't like it. It was sadly familiar. I hated it. But then... I recovered. I wallowed for a bit, but then I did something WILD and CRAZY. True story. I climbed out of the bubble, went downstairs, found some of my weird people, and confessed about having a pity party. (Aside - I like to take mental pictures of facial expressions I get from others when I say stuff sometimes - like the validation face I got from my youngest a couple of weeks ago) I got the BEST FACE from one of the "weirds".  She was blown away that a stranger to her had just talked about something so "gut level".  Right after that the strangest thing happened. The three of us, all mothers of high school girls,  were really honest with each other about how our children make us feel sometimes. We had a moment of shared understanding. You know what? That moment was freeing. I realized that the bubble, though it feels safe, actually isolates me. It doesn't protect me, it keeps me locked away from the people or environments that can support me. Moreover, it perpetuates the emotionally dishonest lifestyle that our society embraces. When I was honest with my peers, they were honest with me too and we all benefitted from the conversation. That, my friends, is how it should be. It's how it was designed, before sin with all of it's shame and hiding hijacked what was beautiful and made people start to hide.