Dude. This honesty thing (which I never said I was trying to do, but appears to be rushing me anyway) is kinda lame. It brings up all sorts of unwelcome feelings and attitudes I’d rather not deal with.

It’s funny, cause it’s not like I’m a big liar. I’m actually a horrific liar – my face turns red, I can’t help but look away, my heart beats faster (audibly, I’m sure). I always lose any game if lying or bluffing is necessary. Balderdash, Three truths and a lie…I don’t have a chance. Everyone always knows if I’m trying to lie.

It’s not that I lie. It’s that I omit. Or actively work to change my own mind. Or I try not to let things bother me, to be easy to get along with.

And right now I feel like those are still good things to do. But suddenly, yesterday, I felt like I couldn’t do that. Like if something bothered me even a little bit, all the sudden I found myself saying something about it. Made for a lame night, let me tell you. Not a fan of that.

There’s a part of me that feels like I’ve been shoving things behind a huge wooden door and now that I’ve cracked it with that post yesterday, just a tiny tiny bit, those things are pushing at the door, streaming out and pushing that crack into a full on open door. That does not feel comfortable at all. Not one bit.

We always talk about shoving emotions anywhere as unhealthy. I wonder, is it? No, I really, really do.

I’ve become fascinated with the brain this last year, and been learning all kinds of things about it. You know what’s amazing? No memory, no experience is 100% objectively accurate. Everything is not only interpreted, but stored in ways unique to us. You can never say “This was the situation. Done.” There are always as many ways it went down as people were there. That’s mind blowing to me.

AND. And, we are constantly recreating ourselves. When we recall a memory, it get’s changed a bit, without fail. The very act of recalling it, alters it. Now, I’m not saying that first grade teacher that you remember loving was really actually a horrible witch to you. I’m saying that when you and your sister remember a fight you had, the context in which you remember it (and every other context in which you’ve remembered it) alters it a little bit. The emotion you’re feeling when you remember it, the other things you’re thinking about…they all contribute to it.

No memory is consistently, objectively true. You know what that means to me? We’re recreating our memories and therefore ourselves constantly.

And because of that, just going with whatever feeling I happen to have in the moment, seems like not such a great idea. Shoving everything unexplored behind a huge door probably isn’t the best alternative. But. But, acting on everything I feel isn’t going to work for me at this stage either.

A bit of a leap there, you say? Yeah, maybe. But I’m running out of time before I have to hit publish. So we’ll have to explore it more another day.