Let’s Be Honest

 

P r e f a c e:

I began the draft below a few months ago but never published it, it didn’t feel ready or right. I pondered over it on several occasions knowing that I started this blog with great intent and that it was vital to perpetuate content. That being said, I refuse to publish something for the sake of filler as I want my content to have heart and a meaningful purpose. I wondered why it didn’t feel right as these thoughts and feelings flowed so freely when I was composing them, but in retrospect, I now see why there was a delay.

Last week a friendship was terminated. This friend was one of my dearest and for a couple years now, someone that I shared close to everything with. I received a vague message and then was immediately sealed out. I was bewildered to say the least, just when I thought that nothing could blindside me more than that untimely breakup with my first love, a new form of heartbreak presented itself. I could not make sense of it, nothing had happened to prompt this, I was overthinking and riddling myself sick with anxiety and negativity. I still am.

Long story short, the truth prevailed soon after. I am beside myself, I am devastated. I was not given answers or a single explanation by said “friend,” but one thing I do know was that I was lied to extensively and grotesquely. It’s hard to swallow,  but there isn’t another conceivable scenario, it was a slew of deceit. It was a web tangled so tight and intricate that either they were too cowardly to come clean and be respectful or they just didn’t give one single shit about me.

I feel this is why I was never able to publish my post below. I feel writing that piece was a foreshadowing event of my misfortune and inevitable fate, if fate is even substantive. As I a search for even the most meager amount of peace to move onward from this dispiriting manifestation of distrust, I know there is no better time for me than now to show myself pure and unfiltered anew, and to carry forward what I had started here in this space.

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For the duration of my intellective years thus far, I have been what I would consider elocuently honest. Integrity is incredibly important in maintaining my personal happiness. May it be staying truthful to myself, others or simply practicing ethical behavior, I have always made it a point to be a forthright but kind human. I remember myself this way for as long as I can remember. I remember being the token tattletale for I was the youngest of the bunch amongst my cousins. Being a telltale child has always been seen as such a negative thing, I can see why, but I also see this now as an early development in my truth telling skills. I would never snitch solely as a means of getting someone into trouble, I would snitch because I felt something was being done that I did not feel was right, snitch for my protection and wellbeing of all. I also recall the days that my truths came upon me a bit differently, days where little things like getting in trouble for being too chatty in class would send me into a gut-wrenching guilt. It was such a minor infraction, nothing would come of it, but yet I as soon as I jumped off the school bus, I’d go strait to the landline and call my mom at work. An eleven digit 800 number and one extention away from spilling my guts to my mother, about something that was so minor, a dramatization of a frivolous occurrence that had me guilt-stricken. All that mattered was that my conscious was clean, that I was honest about something, even if it was something that was unmeasurable and petty.

Fast forward, 24 year old Courtney? Mostly healed from a breakup that had happened 2 years prior, this girl plunges into the dating world. Mind you, the dating world is just short of insanity these days and I have been rejected repeatedly. Rejection isn’t the shocker here, why I had been rejected is. Of course some people I had met were better off friends, some had zero communication skills and others fell into the general category of being terrible humans, i.e., depthless assholes (figuratively not literally), complete deluders and birdbained specimens, but some really shocked me more than others. Their outright reason for not wanting to meet me or continue to date was, in so many words, but one time in these exact words, “you’re too honest.” I have been called unattractive, I have been called fat, I have been called insecure, but too honest? Really? It’s understandable if my honesty was delivered in poor fashion or if my so-called honesty was actually just an uneducated opinion, but I can confidently say that was never the case. I don’t actively speak in a way that I am thinking to myself, “hey, i’m gonna say honest things,” it’s just who I am and what I happen to divulge. I say what I feel and speak what I know. I can’t feel sorry about being a trustworthy person. I can’t be sorry if even my kind truths are unbearable to you.

The reason for this rant comes from a lot of longstanding feelings on honesty. How it’s such a profoundly desirable trait, but by some, such an ghastly concept. May that be in practicing ultimately what is a virtue, hearing something that you may not want to hear (again, even when presented kindly and contructively) or just having no consciousness of how poor actions effect others, I can’t emphasize enough the precedence this topic takes within me.

I write this as a declaration as to what a large part of my work represents. Of course I have made some work that is more in the conceptual realm of art, but the voluminous portion of my creations is in realism. Although, art this honest can be intimidating to share at times, I can’t imagine having a different overall photographic style. Art is always going to open to interpretation, to opinion, to criticism, but I want my work to at least always be perceived as the truth, my truth, the subject’s truth. I am not one to hide things, I am always eager to share. I find that through my art, I can ignite these sensitive feelings and questions with my viewers. I crave a symposium, at the very least an intimate engaging viewing experience.