Telling the Truth

I have found in my life that it is so much more comfortable to tell the truth than to lie to escape blame.

However, telling the truth about someone hurting me has always been difficult.  I have been challenged recently to disclose my well-founded worries about someone in church, not for my sake of safety, but for other’s.  Sometimes, keeping silent is the same as a lie. 

Think about it.  Doesn’t it feel equally bad carrying the weight of your own lie as it does to bear the burden of someone else’s lie for them?

Calling evil good.  That’s kind of what carrying around some else’s lie is.  I know in my abusive marriage, I presented a face of our family being happy and loving when it was cold and hard instead.  I told myself lies to make myself believe the lie that things were good.  It created cognitive dissonance that is finally resolving now that I am not afraid to tell the truth.

We need to speak the truth in love to ourselves and others.  Letting others tell their lies hurts us.  It is a brave and honorable thing to bring abuses out into the light. 

It is hard to learn how to break the habit of carrying lies (especially if we learned it as a survival mechanism in childhood), but learning to do this is something we can do one step at a time.

Day -12 and Seeing Hyde in A Music Video

A song I’ve heard a thousand times played on my Pandora station today. It is a song that was made popular several years ago –about the time that I got married and moved abroad. I never saw the music video, so I decided to look it up.

About halfway through the video I felt like I was in a time warp. On the screen before me I saw the very disturbing scene of interactions between Hyde and I playing out in the music video. The woman who’d been silent through the first two-thirds of the song started to sing. She turned and faced the man singer who never acknowledged her existence, didn’t acknowledge the pain she was expressing, and flinched and looked uncomfortable as she laid the truth out on the table.

I know you’ve heard the song, “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye and Kimbra.  Until recently I didn’t understand the dynamics of that song. Clearly it is depicting a narcissistic and abusive relationship. Kimbra sings about thinking that she done something wrong but later realizing it wasn’t her all along it was him. Gotye sings about how she cut him off and all I could think about was that he was talking about the supply she used to provide.
 
There’s a point at the beginning where he looks down avoiding eye contact , looking sad at the start of what he’s saying.  Then he looks up into the camera at the word die. That’s exactly the subtle type of dagger Hyde would stab me with regularly. His eyes were always full of disdain and disgust for reasons I could never understand. That action of looking into the camera at the word die speaks volumes about what’s going on inside behind those eyes. If you didn’t know to look for that you may not think anything of it or you may think you are crazy for reading anything into it. This is how I felt on a daily basis. I was so confused and felt like I was absolutely crazy.

The way Gotye never looks at Kimbra while claiming to be in so much pain because she won’t be friends is something I find disturbing. He has no real connection with her. His calling her  “somebody he used to know” reduces her almost to an object, an object with no name, no feelings, and no worth in his eyes. 

I’m including the video in the following link. Pay special attention to the part where Kimbra approaches Gotye. Watch his expressions and movements because that is exactly what trying to have a real heart to heart conversation with Hyde was like.  The huge sigh and the slow eye close are exactly the gestures Hyde made during these interactions.  Freaky.

https://youtu.be/8UVNT4wvIGY

This unexpected third person view of what I experienced really helped me to see that he hurt me, not because there’s something wrong with me, but because there is a massive defect in him. I am so grateful that I am free of his dysfunction and heartlessness.

Praise God for breaking me out of that bondage.

It Is Not Okay

It is not okay to tell me you will do X and then fail to it, then make me out to be a complainer for reminding you that you were supposed to do X.  (This happened with the apartment manager…twice)

It is not okay to say you accept my decision and then immediately proceed to persuade me to do what I said I didn’t want to do. (Happened recently with a friend)

It is not okay to make plans with me to help you with something and then not be there when I go to pick you up. (happened with a different friend). 

It is not okay to accuse me of yelling at you and then hang up on me (twice) because you don’t want to pay your overdue rent. (someone I had to deal with at work.)

It is not okay to make fun of me and disrespect me and then complain that I am mean all the time. (My child does this).

It is not okay to drag your feet on a task and then freak out in my space, causing me stress and anxiety, because it has progressed to emergency stage.  (My mother does this).

It is not okay to manipulate circumstances to my detriment. (Hyde does this and so much more).

It is not okay for me to lose my temper…or is it?  It doesn’t seem right that I am so down on myself for losing my temper for a moment after experiencing any one of these things.  Yet all of these things occured in less than one week, and here I am feeling guilty for expressing my anger.  I know this is disordered thinking…How do I stop?