Honesty

                                               








Honesty has always been easy and hard for me.  I tend to naturally lean towards being honest and yet I have been very burned by being honest.  I sometimes roll my eyes and tell Hubby that I'm a thirty something woman, on my own, married with a family of my own and yet I STILL lie to my parents. 

Growing up, honesty was frowned upon.  I realized early that my mom didn't want the truth, she wanted what she wanted to hear.  I got in trouble for any idea, opinion, or emotion that she didn't feel was the "right one".  I still to this day don't talk politics or religion with my mom.  I got tired of being told my thoughts are wrong, so I stopped sharing them.

I have for a long time though, with other people, held an open heart policy.  I may not always offer information but if you ever want to know anything about me, just ask, I won't lie.  I'm pretty open about most things in my life.  I tried to be honest when relapse hit.  I told some people I wasn't eating.  I didn't care that they wanted me to, I just cared that I had said it and therefore felt clear in my conscience because I wasn't lying.

I was still lying though.  I was claiming 200-400 more calories a day than I was actually consuming.  I was insisting that I wasn't sick.  I was sneaking exercise because Hubby had banned me from exercising.  He told me I wasn't getting enough calories to fuel my body for exercise and told me I wasn't allowed to exercise.  I would wait until he was in bed and then exercise for a couple of hours.  It was a lie but I couldn't make myself tell the truth, even though I still valued the truth and longed for the openness and honesty I had once lived.

In the early days of recovery I was honest with someone.  I was honest with my best friend.  I told her what I was doing when I was struggling with recovery.  I told her what I was doing that was keeping me trapped in my ed.  I told her what I did to hurt myself.  I told her because I desperately needed to verbalize it, to loosen its grip on me, to not let the secrecy build and become my enemy and the ally of my illness.  She left.  She was so angry with me, with how I was destroying my body, that she couldn't take it and she left me high and dry.  Being honest left me very broken.  I have only just last week ever told another person what kept me in bondage during that time.  I was afraid to be honest about orange, being honest had cost me my dearest friend.

I still treasure honesty.  I still tend to naturally lean toward the side of being too honest.  I know sometimes that will hurt me, but I also know that it isn't something that I ever want to change about myself again.  I don't ever want to get back to the point that I lie to everyone, even myself, to cover the pain I was feeling and the control that orange was gaining. 

In being honest, in sharing my struggles, I have grown.  In being honest, I have been able to talk to my dear friend who is battling her own food demons right now.  I have lost a lot, but I have gained so much more through honesty.  And I never plan to return to that girl who lied to give something the power to slowly kill me.