H is For Honesty

My Scarlet Letter

I have always lived by honesty is the best policy. That’s the way I was raised. This can be one of my biggest flaws at times. Some take my honesty as being rude or mean, but I feel like they should always know where they stand with me. This flaw of mine has, at some points, caused friendships to fail and people to turn their backs on me. My sin is that I am brutally upfront and honest all the time. This is the story about how that sin has affected my life.

High school life at my old public school was a very difficult and unhappy time for me. My friends saw it, my family saw it, and even my teachers and coaches saw it. There were always cliques at school, and I never really belonged to one. I would bounce from group to group because I had a lot of friends. Or so I thought.  It was about midway through my sophomore year, and I had just been broken up with by an ex-boyfriend who was toxic. Him and I shared a lot of friends, and everything that had happened made it really awkward for our friends.

Around that time was when the rumors started, he had begun them, and my “friends” were spreading them and talking about me behind my back. They thought I didn’t know, and that I was blind to the whole situation, but it turns out that I wasn’t. I heard everything they said about me. How brutal and upfront I was, how annoying, and how much of a try hard and a goody two shoes I was.

Being the person that I am, I wanted to know the truth. I wanted them to be honest with me and tell me why they were saying such mean things about me. The response I got was somewhat expected. They lied and said they never would say that and how I shouldn’t have assumed that they did. That was the final straw for me, and I was my most honest with them than I ever had to be before.

I told them that if the lies were going to continue, and they were going to keep saying these rumors about me, and keep treating me badly, that I didn’t want them in my life anymore. I was done, I had been nothing but nice and welcoming to them, and I had always been honest to them even when nobody else was, and they took it for granted.

That’s when everything started to get worse. I was outcast for being honest with them, and they turned many of my friends against me. The people who were my true friends though, they stayed around, and they supported me throughout everything. They still support me to this day. The funny thing is though, they are people just like me, always honest, and they had been through the same situation. I will be completely honest, I am proud of my sin. It makes me who I am. I am happier now without those people in my life, so my sin actually helped me in a way. To this day still, I believe that honesty is the key to life.