HONESTY MONTH: DAY 4: “I’d rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn’t being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other’s sure to.” ― Truman Capote
I love this quote, because Holly Golightly was one of my young girl heroes. While other girls wanted to be Gidget or one of the TV sitcom female roles, I wanted to be Holly Golightly. She was beautiful, and (I thought) sophisticated, living in NY and all. And her free spirit totally resonated with me. Of course, she drank too much, but that was all part of the aura I coveted.
And I loved her frank honesty. She cared nothing for conventions or being “nice,” although she was so broken and all.
Anyway, I always remembered this line, one of my favorites. I always resonated with dying from any form of disease rather than being rotten and dishonest in my heart.
I believe that is the thing that kills us in addiction. Living with dishonesty and dishonor breaks our hearts. Yes, we break the hearts of everyone who loves us, but most importantly, we break OUR hearts. I broke my heart, and it was the hardest thing to reconcile when I got here.
That is what I learned in Step 4. How to reconcile the BS stories I told to justify my behaviors. I KNEW I was full of crap, but I couldn’t find any conscientious way to reconcile it and become the kind of honest this thing demands of me.
Lying to you is not what broke (or breaks) my heart. Lying to ME is the killer. It is worse than any kind of cancer because I cannot see it and I have to die around this kind of deception. It is the killer that takes us out, over and over again.
I can die physically but dying emotionally and spiritually is pure hell. There is always hope with a physical ailment. What is odd is that a physical sickness does not create emotional or spiritual illness. BUT spiritual and emotional sickness DOES create physical illness. It is just the opposite of what we believe. When there is a chronic physical ailment, it can often be healed and alleviated by deep emotional and spiritual work.
When we are not aligned with our own hearts, our bodies suffer. So, living with a dishonest heart often DOES create various forms of illness in the body. In order for us to recover well from addiction, we must treat the problem…the strange mental and emotional twists of our minds…our old ideas, our dishonest stories about our lives and behaviors. These will kill us in a variety of ways. And none of them are going to heal our broken hearts.
