Truth.

The next 48 hours were spent drowning in an bottomless dirty puddle of self-doubt and self-judgement. I'd gone so long without having to write one of those, "I effed up... BIG time..." emails to my best friend, that each word that I typed made me sink lower and lower. I was sure I'd taken everything I'd so carefully constructed over the past year and smashed it into a million little pieces in one night. And it just felt so typical of me that I wanted to cry.

I've spent most of my life trying to hide certain aspects of who I really am so that I better conform to the views that people have of me. So when I woke up, realizing I had accidentally dropped the facade for a night and was completely honest about who I really am, I was sure it was the worst thing I could have possibly done.

But, as it turned out, I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only had he not judged me for any of it... But it all had actually heightened his opinion of me. o_O The conversation that followed was four hours long, and by the end of it my entire perspective on being myself was irrevocably changed.

His perspective made me see how the moments of my life I most wished had never happened were precisely the ones that inspired the best parts of who I am today. They weren't things I needed to hide from or be ashamed of... Instead they were the divine starting points or catalysts or mini battles that made me this girl whom I've been falling in love with this year. They didn't make me less of that girl - they MADE me that girl.

Suddenly all of the little moments that had seemed so dark and shameful began to appear light and sparkly. All the time I'd spent wishing I could change those moments had been silly, as those moments were divinely inserted into my life for very specific reasons. The problem was that it'd taken me 24 years to start to see the big picture and reap the rewards intrinsic in it all.

It was certainly eye opening... But it wasn't the most important epiphany from that four hour conversation. The most important one was realizing that all those hours talking with Conor and Martin had stuck.

I remember one afternoon I was laying in the sunshine on the floor of my bedroom, having class on the phone with Martin. I was in an unusually angsty mood and he called me out of it. "Why do you have to judge him like that? What would happen if you let him live his own truth? What would happen if you saw them as innocent?" These three questions nearly made my blood boil. Of course I couldn't just sit back while one of my best friends made horrible choice after horrible choice. I knew better than them and had to stop them.

Martin tried to reason with me. He tried to make me see that what's right for one person may not be right for the other person, yet I refused to listen. I knew better than them and that was that. How could I stand back and watch as these people I cared about went on ruining their own lives?! Living their "own truth" my ass...

Secretly, I wanted more than anything to be able to see them as innocent. I wanted to be there for my friends as someone that could help rather than someone who just kept yelling at them. But how?

The thing I was missing of course was the big picture. People didnt decide to do drugs because they were just stupid. People didnt decide to fail classes because they just didn't care. All of it had a deeper reason, and all of those deeper reasons were rooted in a fragile place that had been hurt too many times.

Gradually, I began to see people differently; I began to see them as little tiny creatures who had been so repeatedly knocked down and injured that the only way they could continue in one piece was to do the things I had been so harshly judging them for. And it wasn't as if I were any better than them, myself. I, too, had that little creature inside me that did things others didnt understand for her own reasons rooted in fear.

So when he told me that he hadn't really talked like that with anyone, Martin's words came flooding back to me. When he told me that me having been so truthful and open about my own life had made him feel at ease to open up about his.

I reread that line over and over, feeling more and more honored each time I read it. I had gone from somebody who had judged others out of fear and ignorance to somebody who people felt comfortable opening up to. o_O Whoa.

And that is the story of how the one night I'd feared had ruined my summer and an important relationship to me turned out to actually be part of what has made them so great! <3 I adore when something unexpected turns out to be something you value quite a bit!

XOXO