To be Honest

I was honest today. That's not saying I'm a dishonest person, but today I was honest about my mental state. It's a habit, we all do it, someone asks how we are and we say we are "fine" or "good". In reality that isn't always true and we just keep moving forward. We go about our day no matter how we are really feeling and keeping that information to ourselves. Today was different, I decided to be honest.

I share a phone plan with a family member and they asked if I had time to look to see her share of the bill yet. At first I said I hadn't had time, but then I thought a moment. "Well, I guess I have had the time to, just not the mental energy to." is what I sent to her afterwards. I'd been feeling overwhelmed and I just barely had the energy to drag myself out of the bed. I was vegging out with junk TV and mindless puzzle games on my tablet. It was easy to leave it with just the lie of saying I hadn't had the time, but I chose to be open and honest instead. I wasn't sure what I expected, I knew it could go well or go bad. The response was simply: "I understand." It felt liberating being honest and felt even better when she understood where I was coming from.

If we normalize being honest instead of saying something like "I've been too busy" maybe it'll create a more open and honest connection with those we deal with on a day to day basis. There are some days where we all just need to have a mental or emotional break, for some of us we may need a week. Just say that next time and see how it goes. Maybe they will be understanding or maybe they won't. Either way you were honest with them and with yourself. It may even show you who has the capacity for understanding in your life and who may be someone to kind of keep a little distance from. We all need people in or lives that we can just be open with.

Before this month I never would have decided to follow up with honesty. However, I lost someone I admired and respected to what we all thought was suicide. Thankfully the coroner released the cause of death and it was actually natural causes. But during that time it was a lot of what ifs that everyone who knew him had lingering in the air. I remembered the last time I spoke to him and we had that exchange everyone has in passing at work. I was busy and made a mental note to try and make time to speak again later. He had looked down lately and I knew he was going through some things. I did want to make sure he knew he had someone to talk to if he needed it. I did not get that time to go speak before he left for the night. Two nights later I came to work and got the news that he had passed away. I will never get my chance to chcek in. Even knowing it was natural causes it still bothers me I didn't, because it's still important to check in with people, even if it isn't someone we are close to or talk to on a daily basis. You never know what a difference you could make. I have become much more aware of needing to check in on people and hope that I never have that kind of regret again.

Mental halth matters.