Honesty Hurts

I don't know...
It just seems like honesty hurts. The kind of honesty that bares your soul to someone else. I've never done that before. I've been on the road to it and realized that the other person was putting up road blocks and didn't want to "see" and "know" me any more. What hurts is when the other person is one that you so desperately hope will know you and still love you or still be your friend.

I have a few very good friends, but I won't risk our friendship by letting them know the things that tear at my soul. Things that rip me apart in the struggle against them. I have whole catagories of me that no one has ever glimpsed. Only God. Am I wrong to want someone here on earth that I can talk to about everything? My everything is pretty intense.

One time, about a year ago, I thought there was someone who could handle my everything. So I asked her a question. This wasn't just any question. It was a real doozy. Took me weeks to work up to it. She didn't know the answer and said she would ask her pastor. I've called her a few times since then, and I've even asked her about the question a time or two. She evades. We don't really talk anymore. I over estimated what she could handle and lost a friend.

What do people do? There are so many layers of me and I can adapt and fit on the surface with many different types of people, and in diverse situations. What do people do around other people? How do they decide who they are, for that person and situation? Is that what people do? Do they consciously decide what part of their life they will allow others into? Does everyone have walled defenses many layers deep, but just keep everyone to the outer layers?

I'm tired of the walls, but I don't know how to keep up the right ones. I hear a lot of talk about the need for transparency in our lives with other Christians. What kind of transparency are they talking about? to what extent? I don't get it. It comes back to the fact that honesty hurts. It hurts when you're too honest with people. It also hurts when you hold back because they can't handle it.

It's me. Hello, it's just me. I have to live with me and I can't even let anyone else know me, not all of me. It's kind of lonely just being with me and knowing that if I was really honest, in a bare your soul kind of honesty, that I would be all alone because no one would stay. No one really knows me, but God. Is that how it has to be?