Honesty Feb 24, '09 2:35 AM from one of my Multiply sites that was deleted.
by JoAnne for everyone
Getting honest, self-honesty was difficult. I had lied to myself for so many years that it was hard to face the reality of my life. I had ignored my needs for so many years, I didn't know what I needed for myself.
I had lived my life through other people all my life and what every they wanted, I agreed, role played and wore the mask I needed to fit in and get along with no honest thought if it was good for me or if it met my needs. I didn't know I had them, and that I had a right to have them filled.
I was used by so many people that it was difficult to recognize that it was abuse and that I no longer had to put up with it and that I could set boundaries and take care of myself.
When I came into recovery, I had to put my sobriety first. I had to get honest with me and look at what I needed for my own growth and healing.
With my upbringing, I had been cash register honest. I remember feeling guilty because I walked out of a store wearing a thimble I forgot that I had tried on. I wasn't even in the department for me, I was with my girlfriend. I never did the 'sew' thing. I even remember that the thimble cost 45 cents. Needless to say, that was a long time ago. It happened before I started drinking. When I got honest, I realized that I had stollen time from my employers, I took sick time and often stayed home from work and school as a result of my father and mother. I robbed me of many things as a result of it and had to make amends to myself in many areas.
As the Big Book says, I was judging me by my intentions and others were judging me by my actions. I had to learn to walk my talk. I realized that this was a 24 hour program, not a 2-4 hour a day program. It was for living and the more I got honest the more I healed. They told me I was only as sick as my secrets. There was my secrets and those of others, that I had taken on and had to let go of and recognize what was mine and what was not. I had to recognize what no longer served me in today and were feeling, thoughts and actions as part of my 'isms' of my disease and find what I needed to recover.
When I could get honest with me, I could be honest with you. I use to be highly offended if anyone even suggested that I was a liar. In fact I halled off and slapped a girl and sent her flying because she did. She was 4'11" and 100 lbs. and a mouth twice her size. It ended up it was the culmination of a lot of things and I lost it. She was my sister's best friend and I had gotten a job in my department at work. It was a combination of her actions at home and at work. It was not a good thing working and living with someone, especially when she felt like she had to make up for her lack of size with agression. She was standing beside the bed in the spare room and she landed on it. She had told me something would fit and I said it wouldn't and if you tried to make it fit it harmed other things. She kept arguing and was verbally abusive and I reacted. I never realized that the person I lied to the most was myself. It was one of the few times I acted out my anger instead of internalizing it.
Honesty is one of the main principles of this program needed to work all of the Steps.
