Excuse Me Ma’am But I Think Your Boyfriend’s Gay And Other Socially Unacceptable Things You Shouldn’t Say Part 1

I’ve found as I’ve gotten older I’ve become more… well honest. Growing up a home-schooled, preachers daughter with a astonishing lack of bff’s running in and out of my life, taught me one thing- you have to become what ‘they‘ want in order to be accepted. One of my personality’s biggest strengths became my biggest weakness (tale of everyone’s life I know, but I’m the one telling the story here). I have this innate ability to be dropped in any situation and in 2.5 seconds or less I’ll know exactly how to operate in a manor best fitting to be responsive to what’s going on. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing as in if it comes down to sink or swim, honey I’m aiming for the shore. Bad thing, if I’m not feeling 100 percent confidant in who I am/where I’m at in my current daily life, I don’t adapt, but rather I conform. As a little girl my dad would call me a chameleon, because every time I would come home from a friend’s house I would be more ‘them‘ than ‘me‘. As much as I hated when he said it then, I now know he was right.

Being a child and having no sense of identity as well as having limited relationships beyond my immediate family left me somewhat handicapped in the area of leaning to stand on my own two feet in social interactions, so my best offenses became my defensive downfall. This wasn’t just a young girl trying her best to fit in, it was an experiment of how I could alter myself over and over until I got the result I thought they wanted. Most of this came though not how I acted, but by what I said. I learned to become a yes-girl. From my being able to read people’s emotion (we call that empathy- number 1 on my strengthfinder test) paired with my ‘always knowing what to say’ I verbally became your best friend. I never took sides, joined in your foe bashing, or egged you on, I simply listened and inserted little words of encouragement until I played your emotions like a finely tuned violin with my subtle words. Need a little encouragement? My god I’d give you the pep talk of the century. You’ll be believing you can take over the world after I’m done with you. Always agreeing, never seemed to play true to the peacemaker my heart really wanted to be. Natural instinct told me to give enlightenment to what they weren’t seeing. No, not tell them that they were wrong, just provide them with the necessary elements of both sides so they could come to a proper, well educated conclusion. But I couldn’t. I had a desire in me stronger than the that of telling the truth. I wanted friends. So with each nod of my head I could feel the bull shit rising.

I’m not sure when it was or what exactly caused my sudden change, perhaps it was picking up the life that I knew and replanting it in a state where I knew no one but my immediate yet again, maybe it was New Years Day when I decided that 2011 was going to be the year of honesty (day one started off with telling my long time crush I had feelings for him- see how well that worked out for me), maybe I had just grown up. But standing here looking back on these last 8 months I can’t help but to see a new pattern emerging from the rubble. I stopped caring about what I thought people thought of me and actually started caring about how I saw myself, and I just so happened to see myself as a rather truthful person. In this, my drastic side kicked in a little less graceful as I’d sometimes like it to, and most (if not all) my filters seems to have disappeared, sometimes in the most inconvenient of moments. There’s one line that seems to pop into my head at these times “why not?”. Let’s face it, I have one little life to live- why the freck would I spend it pretending I feel something that simply isn’t’ true. When airport boy asked me if our curbside kiss stirred up old feelings I figured what did I have to lose besides my humility. Working retail and people ask me if they look good in a shirt that is a terrible fit for them I’m guuna say yes. No way am I letting them leave my store looking that bad. When a guy friend asked me out on a date I had to have that potentially awkward conversation that I wanted nothing more than friendship from him. No it doesn’t always turn out perfectly (like telling one of your best friends who you’re going to see that you’re all but in love with him) but I’m learning. I just can’t be that person anymore, I have a LOT on my mind, and in my experience I’ve lost more in hiding the truth than telling it straight from the beginning.

Maybe it’s my desire to have the same be told to me that drives me. No I don’t want you to tell me the outfit that I’m wearing is hideous (more than likely I think I look amazing), but take a stab at this whole ‘open and honest friendship thing’. I just don’t get it, what exactly are you waiting for to happen before you are honest about how you feel with other’s in your life… with yourself? Hey-o there’s a key point. If nothing else, I know that I am brutally honest with myself. I, sometimes force myself to, look in the good ol’ internal mirror to see exactly what it is that I need to see. An attitude adjustment towards someone when it’s actually my ish. A reality check that a ‘potential crush’ is really only in my head. Or simply taking a look around my life to see what could use a little love-and-attention improvement. I don’t want to wait until I’m 85 before I start telling it how it is. I’ve had over 2 unsuccessful decades to tell the lies I thought they wanted to hear and it’s gotten me no where. At this point it’s either keep on putting up with the heartache of experiencing the disappointment of living behind a mask or taking the chance I just might get somewhere by telling the truth. I have the thoughts/feelings I do for a reason right? (Or I could turn out to be clinically insane). Beeesides, what’s the fun of life if you don’t rock the boat with something outrageous to say every once in a while. That’s why people like me are around for, give ya a little shocking from time to time.

Moral of the story- take the handsome John Mayer’s advice when he sang “Even if your hand are shaking, and your faith is broken, even if the eyes are closing, do it with a heart wide open and say what you need to say”. Take a stab at actually speaking your mind. You just might find out that your thoughts are what they need, not what they want. But rule number one when it comes to honesty- use tact. No one like a bitchy bully. Life goes by faster than we’d like to acknowledge, you’ve got to start looking fear dead in the eye. No one ever died from telling the truth (okay, that’s probably not true but I think you get the point).