Honesty

A small set of personal musings directed toward a friend which I will likely never share with him.

There are moment when I feel compelled to be completely honest with people. This sounds like the confession of a compulsive liar, but I think that it's a confession of a human. Not many people are entirely honest in this world--our fragile lifestyles would not function well if we were soundly honest with one another. And yet, I find that there are a few precious moment when I feel compulsively drawn to opening my mind and giving another the realism of it, despite that I know that it will only make matters worse.

In these moments, I glimpse a tiny possibility, starlight in the corner of the night sky, of the most deep, personal connection known to human socialisation--a completely honest interpersonal relationship. And while I know that I will never achieve that, the thought pains me and fills me with the hope to persevere and search and make futile attempt over-and-over again to manifest a seamless reality.

I have often come home from a gathering, a community event, a night out with friends to feel overwhelmingly depressed. For years, I told myself that I do not feel lonely--I have no reason to; I don't know a single person with whom I would want to spend time who would not make time for me. I have, for long, lived in social privilege. However, I realised suddenly that this raging depression is loneliness: not loneliness in that I could not be near people, but loneliness in that I could not be close to them. At the end of the day, I have attended an event and am returning home alone. At the end f the day, when I'm lying in a cold bed that is plenty warm but feels like an icebox because I haven't eaten in days because sometimes I just hate myself--God, do I hate myself some days--which I've disguised cleverly as the physicality of discipline, and I feel as if I could slice my stomach out of my abdomen because I broke this fast with alcohol and now feel a mixture of dying and painfully still alive, and then, when I think to myself that if someone were there to wrap their arms around me and hold me close, this would all be entirely bearable, only then do I enact honesty upon myself and accept that this loneliness is not physical distance, but a mental-emotion lapse.

The most sorrowful image in this situation is that I am alone in the midst of a crowd. I think that many people feel this way in times of their life, but I am not many people. I am one, and I know somewhere within myself that this loneliness will not cease because I will never be able to be entirely honest with someone who loves me--meaning both that I cannot bring myself to that sorrow, and that anyone with whom I am entirely honest will not love me. Honesty with unconditional love and acceptance leads to the formation of mankind's greatest gift, but those additions are rare and honesty more commonly leads to mistrust and misunderstanding (as counterintuitive as that seems).

This is not a hopeless resolution to an unpleasant fate--it is a realisation that with every privilege comes baggage. For every dime of cocaine there is a respiratory worsening; for every drink of alcohol, there is a damaged liver. And for every unusual person, every talented, gifted, privileged person, there is a certain loneliness born of his or her personal demons.