The Haunting Refrain of Honesty

I recently posted an essay I wrote while in treatment, called “The Woman I Want To Be.” And as so often happens, what I write comes back to “haunt” me so to speak. This past weekend I found myself struggling with a certain aspect of what I had written.. As I sat down Sunday night to enter my nightly inventory in my journal, I could not get a sentence from that essay out of my mind. The sentence is this:

She is honest, not just by refraining from lying,

 but by living her life openly,

leaving it bare for others to examine.

And I was haunted by those words because I knew I had not been honest this past weekend. In recovery, honesty is the most basic tenet of getting and staying well. Without complete honesty, our sneakiness and lack of integrity eat away at our core being, and compound our feelings of unworthiness and disgust. And those feelings then spin us full steam into the cycle of destruction.

The part I am so frustrated with is this:  I simply had no reason to lie. I had done nothing to be shamed over. I just wanted to do something different than someone else wanted to do. And I didn’t have the courage to just say no to them; to state with confidence what I wanted to do. So I lied. I said I had somewhere else to be, someone else to be with. And in my heart I know they wouldn’t have even minded if I had said no.

So today I am on that old tired trail of one step forward, three steps back. And I am hungering to feel whole – to feel worthwhile again.

But here is the good news. I didn’t drink over it. I didn’t use over it. And the best news? I know what to do to get back on the right path. I start every morning being grateful for my sobriety and for all the good things of my life. And I end every night listing the things I did right and the things I did wrong. And then I make immediate amends. So before I go to bed tonight, I intend to make amends to the person I wasn’t honest with. And then I’ll be able to enjoy that haunting melody of honesty that wants to play in my dreams.

Thanks for listening. Caro