Can Honesty Be Too Much To Handle?

Since I was committed to my journey of rediscovering who I was, what I thought, what I felt and what I truly believed, I had to begin by being completely 100% honest. That is exactly what I did. What did honesty really mean? Was I an honest person? Did I adhere to being honest no matter what the cost? I felt like I was. I thought I knew what this virtue was all about, however, as I pondered this subject for weeks, I discovered a very devastating fact.  Not only did I not fully understand the truth, but the person I was deceiving the most, was me!! If I could not be honest with myself, how could I be honest with anybody? Was my life a total lie? The harsh reality was - yes. 

This became agonizing almost torment.  The major issues in my life all happened because I was not willing to be completely honest.  Why? Fear? Not wanting to deal with the realities in my life because of the pain it might bring to others? Perhaps I didn’t want to deal with the pain it would bring to me. Looking deep within myself, I found I had been doing things I didn’t want to do, going places I really didn’t want to go, saying things I really didn’t believe.  How was I going to turn myself around? How was I going to make sense of any of this? What was this word honesty all about?  What did it really mean and where was I going to get the answer?  I turned to the good old dictionary. It simply states that honesty is free from fraud or deception: straightforward.  Wow, so simple. Or is it?

I was about to find out! Let the real honesty begin. I started from the outside, the physical shell of my soul.  I hated the reflection in that mirror because I was fat!  I was not “pleasingly plump”. I was not just a “little” overweight, I was not pretty, I was just fat!  Why was I fat? I ate too much. Why did I eat too much? I ate wrong foods. Why did I eat the wrong foods? I didn’t exercise. Why didn’t I exercise? And maybe the most important revelation was that I felt trapped in every area of my life. Depression had set in and had been there for a long time.  I now had to deal with my demons. I started taking each reality and became brutally honest with why I behaved in the manor I did.

I dealt with all my eating questions and I dealt with my lack of exercising. Dealing with why I felt trapped was a whole different ballgame. That was emotional and that too was being dealt with. Not by medication but by brutal honesty.  This was extremely difficult, but it was a road I felt compelled to follow. I had to become a mental success before I became a physical success.  And succeed I did.  I have gone from a size 22 to a size 8. I am now active, I am not a slave to food, and I have control of myself. I have done it naturally and healthy. After many years of disastrous weight loss attempts, it was honesty that overcame this prison I was in and it was honesty that was going to help me with the long road ahead.