I consider myself a pretty honest person, pride myself on it (there's my ego, showing itself). But let's face it: we all lie....sometimes. Little white ones, for convenience, to spare someone's feelings. There are degrees of course...how much we're willing to bend the truth to protect someone's feelings. And this can get tricky; for me, there have been times when I softened the truth when I shouldn't have...ended up in relationships that should probably not have happened.
Then, there were times when I was completely unwilling to temper the truth at all. I admit that I have hurt people with my honesty, usually feeling justified in doing so, telling myself that they had forced me to. Actually, I was probably just weaponizing the "truth" in those cases,(my mother comes to mind, and my ex-husband).
In general, the hard things for me to speak truthfully about are my failures. Not referring here to personality flaws....I'm usually pretty candid about my short temper, anxiety disorder, impatience and so on. It's more the way in which these flaws have affected my performance of real-life tasks: on the job, driving, handling my finances. I grew up being a good girl, a smart kid, always good grades, rarely any reprimands from parents or teachers. The longer you go without failing, the harder it becomes, I guess. For instance, I would have a hard time telling the truth about a less than perfect performance review at the office... wouldn't outright lie, but would avoid the topic, if possible.
But the toughest thing for me, without a doubt, is to tell hard truths to a child. I recall the day I told my very young son, that all things eventually die. I think it was a small creature that had died, or maybe a plant, and without too much thought I said something like, "Well, everything has it's time to be alive here on earth but then it gets tired; all things die sometime." I hoped that would sort of take it's time to sink in, but he looked at me with a very concerned expression on his face. "But not me, right???" It felt like my heart sank from my chest into the pit of my stomach but, keeping my facial expression and tone neutral, I told him the truth. "Well, yes, you too....but not for a very, very, very long time. So far from now, you can't even imagine."
And I did my very best not to imagine it either.
— DMRS
Then, there were times when I was completely unwilling to temper the truth at all. I admit that I have hurt people with my honesty, usually feeling justified in doing so, telling myself that they had forced me to. Actually, I was probably just weaponizing the "truth" in those cases,(my mother comes to mind, and my ex-husband).
In general, the hard things for me to speak truthfully about are my failures. Not referring here to personality flaws....I'm usually pretty candid about my short temper, anxiety disorder, impatience and so on. It's more the way in which these flaws have affected my performance of real-life tasks: on the job, driving, handling my finances. I grew up being a good girl, a smart kid, always good grades, rarely any reprimands from parents or teachers. The longer you go without failing, the harder it becomes, I guess. For instance, I would have a hard time telling the truth about a less than perfect performance review at the office... wouldn't outright lie, but would avoid the topic, if possible.
But the toughest thing for me, without a doubt, is to tell hard truths to a child. I recall the day I told my very young son, that all things eventually die. I think it was a small creature that had died, or maybe a plant, and without too much thought I said something like, "Well, everything has it's time to be alive here on earth but then it gets tired; all things die sometime." I hoped that would sort of take it's time to sink in, but he looked at me with a very concerned expression on his face. "But not me, right???" It felt like my heart sank from my chest into the pit of my stomach but, keeping my facial expression and tone neutral, I told him the truth. "Well, yes, you too....but not for a very, very, very long time. So far from now, you can't even imagine."
And I did my very best not to imagine it either.
— DMRS
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