Rigorous Honesty

honesty
Originally uploaded by kennymuz
If you search for tenderness
it isn't hard to find.
You can have the love you need to live.
But if you look for truthfulness
You might just as well be blind.
It always seems to be so hard to give.

Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.

~ Billy Joel


In last night's meeting, the speaker very humbly spoke about her struggle with the concept of Higher Power/ God when she got sober and that the word she substituted in was "Truth". This was primarily because her dishonesty and constant telling of lies was what she needed to work on in order to have sober behavior.

Many members last night identified with dishonesty as both a significant part of their drinking behavior and even as they were beginning to get sober. It is emphasized to us as we read "How it works" from the Big Book at the start of every meeting that this is a program of Rigorous Honesty.

I have struggled with honesty for the majority of my life. Growing up in a home that required me to hold its dirty little secrets when I was out in the world was the start of a long trail of deceipt that I'd walk. My first big lie was in 6th grade when other kids shared about the fantastic things they did over the summer and I had spent mine not doing anything that was noteworthy or that I could be proud of. I think that I may have been old enough at this point that I was likely mowing the lawn and helping my mother put laundry on the line. Instead, when it's my turn to share, I tell my entire class that I was in California on a kid's game show ( that was well-known at that time) and won $500. I instantly became the talk of the class. The truth was that I watched that kids game show on TV and had wished I was on it because I knew many of the answers to the questions.

At a parent-teacher conference just a few weeks later, my teacher boasted to my mother about how proud she was of me doing so well on the game show, leaving my mother completely confused and infuriated with me. I remember her yelling very loudly at me the entire way home in the car about how I embarassed her. I sobbed and sobbed about how we don't do anything like the other kids get to do and this sent her into a bigger tyrade of how I don't know how lucky I am, blah blah blah ...

Getting caught red-handed didn't stop me from lying. It only propelled me to be more clever and more selective and less public about what I told. I was now a junior high school girl who had private singing lessons, dance lessons and my own solo recital. This is what I shared with a small group of girls I wanted to impress who were 1 year older than me. The truth was that I did take ballet for a few years when I was a little girl and didn't like it but loved the idea of doing "real" dancing that I watched on TV. And I constantly sang to myself in a small tape recorder, imagining being on the radio. I would get so lost in music and I could really feel the emotions of the people singing and identify with them. My rich fantasy life was what saved me during that time so that I wouldn't be anhilated by my father's path of self-destruction in our home.

In high school, the lies worsened and I'm aware that they increased in direct proportion to the chaos in my home and in relationship to the plummeting of my self-esteem and sense of worth. The deceipt at this time period centered around things that would draw attention to me for the purposes of feeling sorry for me. Hitting my knees with hammers in my basement and creating stories about the causes. Pretending I had asthma. Having allergies to everything, you name it. All to test if people cared about me. There was no sense of love or caring that I could visibly see anywhere around me and particularly not in my house.

As my drinking took off in college, so did the exaggerations, the tall tales, the bold-faced lies. The web of deceit was so expansive that I could not begin to recount what was what. I had to tell lies to cover up lies and then there were back-up lies. It is hard to imagine that anyone ever took me seriously about anything. The only huge truth I told to a few people was about being raped and getting pregnant. My roommates found me amid the remanants of the act so there was no covering it up. And I knew enough to ask some friends for help so that I could be supported when I had my abortion.
And outside of that event, there was not much else in my life that was very honest.

And as I deteriorated in alcohol and drugs, the lies were compounded. They took the form of excuses mostly. There were always health reasons for why I couldn't perform my work duties. And other more important things I was doing to explain my absences or to account for my whereabouts. It surprises me to this day that I was never fired from a job. Probably because I left them just in time, when I could tell I was walking on thin ice and it was about to break beneath me. Alcoholics speak frequently of geographic changes with the hopes of getting better, drinking less, living right. I can most definitely relate to that. During the height of my drinking, I moved 6 times within a 5 year period.

I've written about my history of stealing which was the more overt aspect of my dishonest behavior. To me, it is the covert acts of deception that are insidious and can be glossed over and which are at the core of my character defects and at the heart of the work of being rigorously honest.

Omissions. Leaving a few small details out that I don't think really matter. Which might be displeasing or hurt the other person. After all, they won't know. Leaving information out is dishonest. It is not giving the other person the full story, the complete picture. I've been criticized in my present life sometimes for giving too much detail and yet this is the work for me of not omitting.

Excuses. Providing a reason or explanation that is a partial truth or not the truth at all in order to save face or to protect another's feelings or to not take ownership for my own behavior. In my drinking days and during the time period I was with my former partner, I was the wizard of excuse-making. All sizes. Many of my excuses were about covering up something I didn't want you to see about me. Because then you would think differently of me, not like me as much or make a judgment about me. And then the excuses were about covering up what was happening in my relationship with my partner and so that no one would see the ugliness underneath the pretty picture that was painted for show. These excuses were really about not letting others know that I wasn't in control. And that I was enabling her. And that I had given my power away and was participating in an abusive situation. The excuses were driven by an overwhelming sense of shame.

Fear of abandonment. To tell you the full truth of me would reveal things that were not attractive. Downright hideous. And once you really saw me, you would not only not like me but you would leave me. And I couldn't bear that. Sometimes I'd leave you first, without a trace and no return phone calls because I had to protect myself from being hurt by you. During my drinking career, I dropped people like flies before they could ever squash me. And then people with more self-esteem dumped me because they didn't deserve to be treated like shit. I totally get it now.
Fear of abandonment is my most core wounding resulting in the character defect of dishonesty -- with myself and with others. It is the area of my life that I have devoted the greatest time in terms of healing and self-reflection during this past year.


And then there's the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive living in our own skin.   Pretending:  to not be who I really am or live the way I really want to live or to know what I don't really know or to feel what I'm not really feeling.   Rationalization:   to smoothe over and make okay what is really not okay.  It's a story to tell myself in order to protect and soothe myself from feeling reality.    And of course the infamous Denial.  To block out of my mind anything that might be too hard to take in or too painful to feel.   Because doing so means that I have to do something.   I have to take an action.   I have to admit to the truth.


This is the work of rigorous honesty. Today, at least 98% of the time I can safely attest, you get ALL of me. No holding back. No excuses. No omissions. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not being honest is not an option any longer.  I need to have my insides match my outsides.   And to be authentic.   To live with integrity.   And as I dig deeper, I get more honest. I'm not done shoveling, so bear with me.