I hate them. I have done some pretty death defying mental gymnastics in order to avoid seeing these hard truths. And I have gone to even greater lengths to avoid feeling them. I still, despite years of work, like a fuck ton of work, still feel like my feelings are trying to kill me. It has gotten better and I don’t feel that way every single day of my life, but there are those days where it feels like, “fuck, today might be the day my feelings actually finish me off...”
But I have this ever evolving relationship with hard truths. Mostly what I have learned can be summed up with this:
Avoiding hard truths only makes them harder. Never easier, although in the moment, it sure seems like sidestepping that fucker would be not only a good idea, but a great strategy.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
Sidestepping does nothing except postpone the very loud and painful landing of that hard truth in your body, mind and spirit. Trust me, I fucking know. I have a PhD in avoidance and at least four PhDs in how those hard truths land after several high speeds chases that end in a fiery crash. I fucking know!
And yet, all that I know is not stuff I have learned. Learning means being able to do it differently and I still, a great portion of the time, don’t do it differently. Meaning, I still haven’t learned.
Fuck.
Again?
Still?
What the ever loving fuck?
Why?
Because hard truths are the easiest thing in the world to escape. Or try to. They beg to be maligned and cast aside. Literally, it seems that avoidance is really the only game in town when it comes to hard truths and their inevitable landing. But I am learning, and I really fucking am, that hard truths are best dealt with up front, with careful thought and prayer then swift, decisive action.
And that is where I have fallen prey to the idea that the action, the changing my own behavior to accommodate this larger, harder truth is somehow avoidable. If I can just not feel it, then...I can alter or change it.
I cannot. Whatever I put off today will just be here tomorrow in an ever greater form. And that hard truth I thought I was so adeptly avoiding, is only harder and more brutally honest than in the days past.
Hard truths are unavoidable for this reason only - they are here to teach us things we need to know: about ourselves, about our loves, about our lives. These “hard” truths are here to stop us in our tracks and allow for course correction. And when we attempt to side step or avoid the hardness of this particular truth, we hurt ourselves and set up a cycle of suffering that is totally and completely avoidable.
I have learned there is nothing to do with hard truths except allow them to land. To take the hit instead of bobbing and weaving and dodging. The hard hittingness of any particular truth is really only here to serve to garner our attention and cause us to understand something about ourselves or someone else more fully. And any deepening of understanding is beneficial for our survival and evolution as a human being.
We go no higher than human in this life. And in so doing, we are never granted passage to whatever the next realm holds without the life bleeding regret for all those should haves or wish I dids.
I have some rather hard truths in my life currently. Ones I have been attempting to avoid with a cheerful optimism that is just grossly misplaced. And in so doing, I have prolonged the agony. I have prolonged the hard conversation that must be born and germinate from any hard truth.
Today, for reasons I do not completely understand...I am willing to look at these hard truths and begin to do my process about dealing with them. I have been avoiding two of these fuckers for some time now. And today, feels like the day I am gonna do some shit differently. Notice I didn’t say better! Fuck, if there is one thing I know about hard truths is that my ability to deal with them, to really hold true to their truth and veracity in my life is compromised, like this whole hard truth living and telling is the bane of my existence because avoiding is so hard wired into my being that confronting and unearthing and then beginning to handle myself in adjustment and alignment with the hard truth is fucking terrifying.
But I know, oh my fucking God do I know, that no matter what reality I attempt to create that defies whatever hard truth I am running from, that I will never ever be able to outrun whatever truth has landed squarely in my heart and mind.
And like a fly caught in a sticky web, my best change for survival is to focus on my self and the truth of my own reality and begin to pluck myself from the tangle of sinuous fiber that ensnares me. And it is here that all hard truths exist...
Again.
Still.
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