Honesty is the Best ... way to get hurt ... but wouldn't trade it.

"In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a sacred white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, — even though it be covertly, and by snatches." ~ Herman Melville

Ever see that episode of Star Trek where Jean Luc Picard was tortured by being shown a number of lights and punished because he said what was there instead of what he was told to see. Welcome to the life of the abused.

This particular method of torture is called gaslighting, made famous thanks to an old black and white movie, where changing the gas lighting was a vehicle for convincing the victim that they were going crazy. Although I've experienced this directly from my ex-husband when he would laugh and lie about things, it's been something ingrained more post trauma than previous. It's a symptom of society that does not want to believe that bad things happen to good people, so someone must ultimately deserve it or is just trying to get attention.

From the time I was a kid, I've been hard wired honest and it's been a point of contention through out my life. Can you imagine the torture it is to tell the truth and constantly be told that you are lying, because I can all too well, to the point that even when I do tell the truth, I just expect people to not believe me.

When I was around 3 years old, they changed the time that Tom and Jerry came on, so when I told my brother what time it was on, and it was different, I burst into tears. My mom had a hard time figuring out that I thought that I had told a lie and that God was going to strike me down right then and there.  My brother had no such problems however, and when he made untrue claims and I brought him books with proof, he would just say, "that doesn't prove anything." When I would be sick, since my immune system has always been on the puny side and eventually attacked my thyroid, he would accuse me of faking, because that's what he did (The acting of projecting one's own intentions onto another is called projection). And I think that's a lot of where this stems from, because the people who have most often accused me of making things up for attention or lying, are often the same people who happen to do such things on a regular basis. Therefore it's less to do with me and more to do with them.

When I was 12 and molested on a church trip by a boy in my class, he called me a liar saying, "You wish" and getting his male counterparts in on the taunting. The same boy, later chased me out into the water and held me under till I stopped breathing and I had an out of body experience, because well, I drowned. I shouldn't be here. I woke up alone on top of the water, staring at the sun, and coughed the water out of my lungs.  When I started at a new high school where he already knew everyone, he became the popular football player, and I had a reputation for being a liar. After repressing the memory, I became very depressed, especially in association with school, and I did indeed cut my wrists, which of course made more people pile on that I was an attention whore, instead of someone who was post traumatic. Suicidal thoughts were more of a constant companion than so-called friends. Things at home had heated up with my brother in the full swing of hormone hell. My parents had their hands full with him, and the incident that caused my woe was forgotten to all including me who repressed it just to move on, till my mother mentioned it one day and I relived the entire event in one horrifying wash. Looking back now it's easy to see that I needed therapy, but the closest we had was family therapy with everyone and while we were all in a lot of pain, my father did most of the talking and thereby got most of the attention. I sat quietly and when they finally asked me, I went down the line with keen analysis of what was actually going on, much to the surprise of the counselors. Because there's one thing that people forget about the depressed. They are depressed not because they are clueless, but because they are perceptive. The problem is, convincing other people.

It was once said by a friend of mine's psychologist that depression and intelligence go hand in hand. Stupid people don't get depressed, because they don't perceive the connections or information that disconcert those intelligent enough to grasp what it is and where it's going. This inability to affect the things that they understand but cannot stop often frustrates intelligent people into a state of hopelessness. There's a reason that ignorance is bliss.

But that's only the start of the pain. For those that don't care about others and aren't sensitive or empathetic, it's easy to shrug off the onslaught that follows. But being sensitive and empathetic, my hardship had just begun. There's a deluge of people who don't want to think about things or become depressed themselves, so it's easier to attack the source or deny its validity.  I had many worries when I was pregnant and the majority of them were truly founded and came true, while the lies of others were no comfort or salve to my grasp of reality. During that time I was labeled crazy for having a very real concern for the impact on my life of having a child, devoid of the delusions of this being anything but a huge sacrifice. She was worthy of that sacrifice, but it didn't make my concerns any less valid or ultimately true, when I ended up in the hospital with preeclampsia and congestive heart failure after giving birth.

Most of this gas lighting was a byproduct of poor choices as a teen while I was still self destructing over another sexual attack. Not to mention some dates that went down right violent. I've had health issues and pains, most byproducts of anorexia, bulimia, and exercising myself into the ground. Although the pains were real, I was literally dying to be pretty so someone would love me, and while in pain, being told "you are faking" is a horrible assault to the psyche. When doctors were no help, I started taking better care of myself and things began to even out. Others used this as proof that I was only faking, instead of actually taking charge of my life and health, and letting some things go. It's a lot easier for some people to attribute nefarious past intentions than to accept that someone might have actually made a move in a positive direction. It disrupts their ability to see things in black and white or allow others to change, which is why 20 years later I still find this crap crop up.

As a result of this, and an incident being molested by a doctor in Macon... sorry you don't have to cup my breast and compare me to your Catholic ex while listening to my heartbeat... I've had several issues surrounding any form of medical treatment. In 1997 when I asked the doctor about my thyroid, she pretty much yelled at me for even asking. 2007 I had to have my thyroid removed because it had been damaged and my immune system attacked it. While pregnant I had symptoms consistent with preeclampsia such as crazy high blood pressure that were over looked until I ended up in the hospital for a month with congestive heart failure and double lung pneumonia. And just recently when my heart was wonky, they handed me my EKG which clearly said "abnormal ECG" and was just wrong to look at. Then they told me I was fine... Most of this is in some ways saying "you're faking" "You're lying" and "you just want attention". And what these undertones do, is basically the same as gaslighting. When I go to the doctor now, it's very rare for my blood pressure to be anywhere near normal, because it's like going into battle and expecting an attack, an attack I'm not prepared for or in any way armed to defend. When you're sick, you are vulnerable, and don't have alternative options to going to a doctor, which may or may not result in being treated like you're doing it for attention from people that you would rather avoid at all costs. 

The other drawback is that I have good hearing, and when doctors talk about you on the other side of the door, you hear it "Gotta go pretend to be someone's friend" was said when I told the first doctor about being raped after reading an article about how rape victims are at higher risk for certain health problems so you should tell them. So that went well... Another treated me like a statistic when he found out, and I had to answer all sorts of questions about my family. I suppose being treated like data is better than the more commonly treated like an attention whore, when I'm white-faced waiting, hearing people I don't know character assassinate me, or in clear violation of Hippa, always brushed off as me being the crazy one. And honestly, I'm not 100%, but who would be in my shoes? That's part of what gaslighting does, it breaks your reality to the point that you start to think, well am I telling the truth? You begin to feel like you're lying even when you know you're not. But you also feel like you have to defend yourself all the time. Ultimately it feels like a life under siege, and there's no one at your back. 

The thing is that people who know me, know I'm honest... to a fault at times. I can be down right blunt, and if I find out I was wrong, I usually come back to correct it. My poor swiss cheese brain that has a hard time remembering chunks of trauma, does not have the energy for such games.  But I find that those around me do, and turn it into those very games, while putting the blame on me.  

People who are close to me have learned that I tell it like it is, and I don't do well with others who don't. I've had friends who used to lie occasionally. Then after being around me long enough, they learned to love the open honesty, so much that they were unable to go back to lying afterwards. There was one overwhelming response to this change - suddenly people didn't like them very much anymore. Those who have been afraid to tell me the truth, found that telling me was so much better than the alternative. After a lifetime of crazy crap, I've heard it all, and am relatively hard to surprise. The problem is that I often combat with logic, and that's where people take issue. Even emotions are fairly logical and rational byproducts of certain things, even if the core of the emotions isn't always what the person thinks it is.

So here's the deal. Don't judge what you don't understand. It's easy to write people off into a certain category. It's harder to cope with the reality of a person, a full human being of flesh and fault, life and laughter, flaws and merits. But just because you don't get them, doesn't mean that what they are saying isn't true. You can't know what it feels like to be that person, having been through everything they've endured. All you can do is know yourself, and that gets extremely hard when people are constantly attacking your perceptions.

Part of the problem with domestic violence and emotional abuse is the silence. The victim is often bullied into silence and afraid to speak up. Society likes to enforce this subconsciously by insisting that you aren't being positive, or that you're being a gossip, or whatever else to the person who is already in a hard position taking an even harder stance to stand up and stand against something. After being terrified into silence by multiple abusers, I've decided "No More" and I simply tell it like it is. Sometimes this is disconcerting to the listener, but it makes it no less true. The byproduct is that it opens up others to talk about things that they have never talked to anyone else about before, because the way I can nonchalantly handle the information and empathize with the person speaking. It's one of the reasons that psychologists exist. This is healing, if anything else, to know that you are not alone.

The other message that it carries is that there's nothing wrong with having experienced it, or talking about it. I've been accused of feeding off of it for attention. I've had any number of accusations thrown my way, and they are all the symptoms of what is wrong. The moment someone stands up and openly discusses real events that are unpleasant, there are always people to tear them down for doing so and project intent onto them.  Many people have worked hard to shut me up, but the thing is, for every person I help, for every person I get through to, for every person who supports me, there are 10 fold who attack me for it. This does not earn me any extra privileges, only more scars. It's painful and goodness knows it would be a hell of a lot easier to be quiet and go back to biting my tongue. It wouldn't stop the people who already want to take me down though, it would only encourage them. The only way to fight is to end the silence, even if Honesty is the best way to get hurt... I still believe it's the best policy.