After years of (a) making piss-poor decisions, (b) experiencing Kechia-created crises, (c) cycling through building, destroying, and rebuilding, and (d) feeling so much inward and outward pressure, I made the decision to be honest with myself and more transparent with others. I grew tired of pretending, shocking the hell out of people I love, providing explanations, apologizing, and alienating people to keep my messy shit from exposure. All of that was incredibly exhausting.
My dad has always told me "no matter what you tell other people, be real with Kechia." I so get it now! Although I used to think, "being real" with oneself was a no-brainer, I realize that it's not. It is so easy to make excuses and displace blame and accountability. It's easy to tell yourself bullshit to make you feel better about your bullshit and keep you involved in bullshit, or at least it is for me. Self-deception comes with costs, always, 100 percent of the time, guaranteed costs. It affects your perspective, judgement and decision making thus infecting your reality. And, it hurts other people. It hurts all of the people you deceive to while deceiving yourself.
So when someone says something to me that amounts to:
"You used to be so [insert adjective]. What happened to that girl?"
I'll usually provide an abbreviated reason for the change I am experiencing. This time the explanation comes from a place of courtesy or respect not guilt or obligation. The mask has come off. Who I am in public is syncing with who I am in private. ("Syncing" because it is an active process.) And, I'm not saying that I have (or will ever) expose all of my "messy shit" publicly. I haven't, and I won't. I reserve some revelations and truth for the people who love me most and a Licensed Professional Counselor. I am saying, with confidence, that today who you see looks more like who you'll get. My character, displayed and intimate, is no longer akin to an angled, edited, filtered social media photo.
