I have always been what I call “brutally honest”.  I rarely hold back an opinion and will rant passionately about people, things, places, events…

And yet I also rarely vent in the heat of the moment.  I rarely get angry or upset and spew out the words that are roiling around in my head.  I tend to hold things in, think about them a lot, put thoughts together and then go off on a tangent of abstract and indirect ranting.

I will run around my house venting and screeching in anger but when it comes time to talk to the person I am mad at, if it’s someone I know and love, I am different in my honesty.  I express my opinion but I tiptoe a little.  I zing them with a water gun instead of a sawed off shotgun.

I am always honest with those I am close to but I am also more careful with them.  I am guilty of being far, far more inconsiderate of the feelings of those I don’t really know or care about in a specific and personal way and far more tender with those I do care for.  I am careful, even when I am honest, that I do not say things that can never be taken back.

When I lived with my best friend from high school and her relationship with her boyfriend drove me to move out, I did not tell her that I thought she was an annoying twat who faked noisy orgasms and made my life a living hell by giving me no space in the apartment I was paying for half of.  I told her that I was uncomfortable sharing the space with them as a couple and felt they were better off making a go of it without me.

I was honest.  I didn’t lie and say I didn’t like the commute anymore or that I couldn’t afford it and had to move back home or any of the other excuses I could have given her but, at the same time, I didn’t express my rage or detailed complaints about her because I knew…

Well, you just don’t do that, you know?  You might think someone looks like a stuck in the 80s nitwit and talks to her boyfriend like he’s a 3 year old and generally annoys the living shit out of you with every breath they take some days but when you love them, you find the line between being honest and being unnecessarily mean.

Maybe that’s wrong.  Maybe I should always be as “honest” with people I love as I am with people I don’t care about. But the reality is…

The person I don’t care about generally doesn’t care about me or even know me.  They’re not affected by the shit I say the same way someone I do have a close relationship with would be.

You, for instance, anonymous reader, could call me names and tell me I’m stupid and point and laugh at me and I really wouldn’t give a fuck all.  But I would care if someone I called a friend did that.

You know?

I dunno.  I’m babbling.  I guess what it comes down to is not being as brutally honest as I thought I was. Or being far more controlled than I thought I was, despite how passionate and crazy and loud mouthed I sometimes seem.

Sometimes you say things and you can never take them back.

And the people you say them about may forgive you but they’ll never, ever forget that what you said…

And that you meant it.

 If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.  ~Bertrand Russell