"Is that what you want? " M smiled at me over her Eggs Benedict and raised her eyebrows. I had just said that I want to sing to my yoga students during Savasana and that would satisfy me as a singer. That would be 'enough'. "Would you like to hear your music on the radio?" She asked. My knee jerk reaction was 'no I don't need that' but deep down I had that sticky feeling of new possibilities, fear, bullshitting myself and feeling exposed because someone might be staring straight into my eyes and seeing all the pimples and barnacles on my soul. That's what "opening a can of worms" feels like. M, says shit like this - questions that come with 0% judgement and 100% love. 'I'm just asking questions so you have a chance to see what your reaction is, and then it's up to you to determine what you want to do from there.' I like to surround myself with "sandpaper people", the friends who say offensive, honest and challenging stuff. Their words give me an opportunity to feel something (pain, agreement, judgement, anger, humor etc...) and I get to know myself better and overcome things that would otherwise, with tip-toeing and sugar-coating, be overlooked, buried and festering.
Painfully honest people lose a lot of friends because more often than not, people don't want to feel uncomfortable, they don't want to deal with the gunk on the inside. They want to be around "bandaid friends" who make them feel better but aren't necessarily ACTUALLY helping them become better through and through. Recently, I told someone how much I appreciate her as one of my honest/sandpaper friends and she turned around and said, "If you appreciate it so much when people are painfully honest with you, are you being that friend for others?" Ouu fuck. Another bulls-eye straight in the gullet. I'm addicted to facing the ugly truth inside myself and now it's time to start being the sandpaper friend that sits there and asks uncomfortable questions and raises her eyebrows behind egg sandwiches because she loves the other person too much to NOT hold up a mirror and say, "Do you like what you see? If yes, fantastic, let's go party. If not, change it and let me know if you need help because I'm right here changing too." Gulp. Being the honest friend is scary but that's the only kind of friendship I want; the one that pushes me (and us together) onto bigger and bigger stages. // - Cha