When it comes to friendship, it is no secret that I have my insecurities. But what I recently realized is that I don’t fear being disliked, as I had once believed.
I fear inauthenticity.
Being “nice” to someone means absolutely nothing; if it does not come from a real, wholehearted place, it is essentially meaningless. In the end, if you are not honest about who you are and what your limitations are, everyone loses, and everyone hurts. You cannot outrun your own truth.
I truly believe that truth and honesty always win, no matter how long it takes. Sometimes, it is for the better, but sometimes, it is for the worse.
Recently, I have been thinking about how I (and so many people I know) have ended up in situations where I believed I had a real friend, only for one seemingly small thing to break the friendship unexpectedly. My theory is that when you hold in your truth for too long, it ends up spilling out when least expected. We create images of who we think we are supposed to be, and the longer we maintain this image, the more the pressure of bottling things up grows. Many times, in losing people, it has been because the truth won; we could no longer pretend we could be who we simply are not. And that is okay.
I would rather someone tell me that they are unable to make a promise I want them to make, than to appease me in the moment by saying what I want to hear. Being everything to everyone is impossible. It is kinder to set a boundary than to have someone count on you for something you cannot offer.
I don’t fear being disliked, because when you live with that fear, you mold yourself to be what you think you are “supposed” to be, and you are never truly you at all. I fear ending up in a situation where I (or the other person) feel uncomfortable because I know I am not being seen or heard for who I actually am. That leads to a place of loneliness and resentment. As I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten a bit easier to accept who I am and realize that some people simply aren’t going to like it, or even “get” it for that matter. I try to be as real with people from the start about who I am, so that I know where I stand, and I’ll never feel like I have to play a role. I used to be so concerned about not fitting into groups, or being judged by certain people, but now I realize that if we don’t connect, we don’t connect. It’s life. You can only find your true tribe if you let your voice be heard…and trust me, they will find you in time. Life is just way too short to be anything but yourself.
In the words of John Mayer: “It’s better to say too much, than never to say what you need to say again.”