Open and Honest?

Be open, don't hide your mess.

Make sure that every interaction is a positive experience for others

If I share my hardships, do I sound like a whiner or a downer?

How can I share without dragging others into my sadness?


I've been struggling with a lot of junk lately.  No more junk than anyone else, really.  I think we all have our own load of junk.  For me, it's major depression combined with a financial drought.  Our rent is behind, our car barely has brakes, it's the monthly juggle to keep all the utilities and the phones from being disconnected.  We get a little in food stamps, but I just got a job and it might be just enough that we won't be eligible for food stamps anymore.  We can't afford to put gas in the car and buy bus passes, but the buses don't run late enough to cover all the running we need to do.  It's just a cycle of craziness that's very tiring with no end in sight and homelessness is looming over our shoulders.

It also seems that no matter what we do to try to resolve things, it's not helping.  We try to set up a budget, but we suck at it.  Every month seems to bring up new surprises.  Dan started school to try to help us in the long run and I got a job to help cover the extra cost of that.  Now, if we lose our food stamps we'll be back where we were to start with, if not further behind.  And somehow, we are not able to pay all of the bills and the rent anymore and everything we are paying towards rent is actually late fees now and an eviction notice can't be too much further down the line.

I"m working really hard to not get sucked down into my depression, which is harder when circumstances are scarier, but even so, some days I do all right.  Other days, I just can't seem to do it.  So when someone asks me, "how are you?" I am getting stuck on the answer.

Obviously, there are plenty of folks who ask me that question and are looking for the, "I'm fine. How are you?" response.  I can do that.  But what about those friends who are asking because they honestly want to know?  How do I answer without being a weight that works to drag them down into the depression right along with me?  How do you contribute to your friends lives in a positive way when you can't get past the fear that tomorrow you'll get that eviction notice?  Or next month you won't be able to feed your kids?  Or that the brakes won't hold and we'll get into an accident and someone will be hurt?

I've been running this argument round and round in my poor, tired brain for a few weeks now.  I'd love to give it up, but it's just stuck there.  So when I went to church this morning, I was still stuck.  Sure, there are some of the "I'm fine," folks here, who don't know me well enough to want to know my gory details and I don't know them well enough to feel safe opening up like that.  Then one of my friends asked how I was and I said I was doing ok.  That didn't really feel right, because it was a lie.  I wasn't even doing ok at that very moment in time because everything was still swirling around on the inside.  Still not knowing what else to say, I let it stand.  But the next time someone asked, I just rolled my eyes and said "eh."  He knew exactly what I meant by that.  His life has been a little "eh" lately, too.  We didn't get too far into the details for practicality's sake, but it was better.  By the time the third person looked at me and said, "How are you doing?" I looked at her and told her the truth.  I said things were rough.  Not necessarily rougher than for anyone else, but not exactly looking good either.  We just talked about our frustrations with each other a bit.  The first friend, who I ok'd, called me on my untrue statement from earlier.  She pointed out that I hadn't shared that with her and that I should have called her when I was having a rough time.  She didn't guilt me, just made sure I have her number so I can call her next time.

Well, I finally have my answer.  It's not that all of my troubles go away when I shared them, and I didn't dump them on unsuspecting victims.  It didn't drag any of my friends down that I shared with them, it bugged them more when I didn't share.  I wasn't asking for pity and I didn't cry to make people feel sorry for me.  I can't say there wasn't a tear or two, there's not much I can about that.  But I feel a whole lot lighter this afternoon than I have felt in weeks.

I know that this is not a quick fix.  When things are rough, I'm still going to want to hide.  I don't want to be depressing to those I care about and if I feel like the story never changes, I worry that others will feel the same way.  I don't know why I instinctively want to run from the very people I should be running to, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that either.  At least knowing that my friends want the honest truth, no matter how ugly it gets, makes it easier to deal with things and easier to share them.  I wonder how long it will take for this kind of honesty to become a habit?