Part of the process I’ve gone through on this personal growth journey has been acknowledging and grappling with the fact that, for most of my life, I wasn’t me. I was performing the role I thought was expected of me. I was living for others, not myself.
It’s been hard to override the feeling that it was all a lie, a fraud, a fabrication, false. Was anything ever real, then? Am I just now starting my life at 26?
Maybe it was a lie. I hardly ever let my authentic self and emotions show through my constant performing. I told others I was fine when I knew inside that I wasn’t. I went along with things and became a person who I didn’t feel I was deep down. A lie with understandable and tragic motivations, a lie made every day by a child who just wanted to be accepted and loved, but still a lie.
That doesn’t mean that everything was fake and artificial, though. It was just short of the truth, my truth. But that gap between fact and fiction held me back from having an authentic relationship with myself and with others; it held me back from truly living.
I eventually realized that, in order to shed the mask and step off stage and become who I really am, I would need to prioritize and commit to honesty - with myself and with others - no matter how uncomfortable or painful it might be.
As I was researching and writing “Curtain Call,” I came across “Radical Honesty” from a YouTube video essay, which then pointed me to the Radical Honesty Institute.
RHI defines lying as “saying or withholding information in order to manipulate someone’s opinion of you,” which describes what I was doing when I was performing as a straight, cis, neurotypical man.
And they outline six core principles of Radical Honesty:
Lying is the primary cause of suffering.
Living honestly is the antidote to lying and the root of its power is in distinguishing noticing from thinking.
You can only notice in the moment. And you can only notice three categories of things: sensations, thoughts, and your external surroundings.
Sharing honestly what you notice frees you from the suffering caused by attachment to lying, withholding, phoniness, and ideals.
Sharing honestly what you notice also deepens love, connection, understanding, and forgiveness (eventually).
Radical Honesty is a living, walking, talking out-loud meditation that moves you from reactivity to being a creator of your own life.
That last one really struck me: “being a creator of your own life.”
After a life of performing, lying, concealing—and experiencing all the resulting costs—that was a pretty liberating realization: that I could have control over my life, that it didn’t have to fit into anyone else’s expectations or boxes or constraints other than my own, what works best for me.
Committing to Radical Honesty isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. It’s not like it magically solves every problem and immediately grants you an all-access pass to a fulfilling life.
It’s work. It’s so, so hard. It’s having difficult, painful conversations and having to navigate challenging, uncomfortable situations.
But it’s worth it, because prioritizing having an honest, authentic relationship with myself—after years of minimizing myself and saving absolutely no compassion or sensitivity for myself—means that I can start living my own life, for me.
And these letters are a piece of that life and my commitment to Radical Honesty. I want to share my story, warts and triumphs alike, in hopes that it helps others live their own authentic lives.
Honesty is such a lonely word/
Everyone is so untrue/
Honesty is hardly ever heard/
And mostly what I need from you/