Autonomy
Dishonest love is not love. It’s living a lie.
When you lie to someone you strip them of their automony. Wise words from a wise human. We all make mistakes. And taking the right away from someone to make an informed decision is something I don’t ever want to do again.
It was wrong. You know lying is wrong. You know it can hurt. But the idea of stripping someone of their autonomy is a whole new level of understanding and a whole new reason to just always be honest.
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I want to connect. At a real, emotional, deep level. That requires trust. That requires full disclosure. That requires you to be real, with others and with yourself. It’s hard. It requires work. And it’s worth it.
I never want to be in a relationship again where I can’t be open and honest about every little detail. Sure, I might not like that haircut or I might find someone can’t trust me if I admit to having lived a lie in a previous relationship. But it has to happen. I have to live my true self. And if I can accept it then hopefully I can find a partner to accept it as well.
There’s a mirror that has been hanging by my bathroom door that says “Know Your Truth” for a couple of years. I bought it because I wanted to do just that. It took too long for the message I was sending to myself to sink in. I stripped others of their autonomy by not knowing my truth. By living in a shroud I constructed. By pretending to myself that everything was going to be just fine. By hiding in work and those places where I was able to find success.
And now all of those walls have fallen away. It started for someone else. But it continues without them, because that’s what I truly want. It now has a life and shape of my own making, and not some construct created by anyone but me. And my ability to write and find success in those places I used to is still there. I think I was afraid it would fall away as well for awhile. But that was just fear. Fear of having other people not accept the raw, bare me. In fact, my writing has more meaning, more substance. Just as I do.
Here I am and I am finding people are far more accepting now than they were when the real, vulnerable me was hiding behind that facade. Because people can see through that shit.
