Where You Can Be Your Slobbery, Ugly, Screwed Up Selves

One value I cherish more than almost any other is honesty.  I mean being vulnerable. We can put on a good front out there but this slowly strangles us inside, and it’s probably why the world is the way that it is: because we’ve bottled up everything about us inside tiny cubicles of courtesy, a tightly coiled parade of modified bravado.

I heard a theory once that conspiracy theories couldn’t exist, because the people hiding those elaborate lies would just blow up.  No one’s good at keeping secrets too long, most especially our own.  We need a safe place to deposit them somewhere, to not be judged for them, to know our tears and scars are not wasted in the silent echo of hiding, to say, “I’m not okay right now.”

I think we need that one friend who’s an open-and-shut vault, where we can vent and just go nuts.  You know, the one friend where we can be our slobbery, screwed up, frustrated, upside-down selves.  And they still hang around in the morning because that’s what love does: it says good morning.  It sticks around.

A culture of honesty could only come from a culture of grace, where we have the undeserved hope of being known but still loved.  We crave grace.  We crave honesty.  You have a friend like that: don’t ever let that go.  They see you at your darkest and limp with you to the light.

— J.S.