Remember the game Truth or Dare?  In Junior High school I went to a party and played the game for the first, and last time.  I got my first, and last, hickey because I didn’t want to tell the truth, so I had to dare.  I didn’t want to tell the truth back then because I didn’t have anything exciting enough to answer with.  I hadn’t done anything exciting enough, like get felt up or kissed by a boy or any other number of radical and wild things at that point in my young life.  Little did I know most kids lied to impress others, seriously embellishing the truth.

A few years later I couldn’t tell the truth because what I was doing was radical and wild and I knew it was wrong.  I hid much of who I was and what I did from everyone and began the long and arduous journey of covering up the truth of who I was and how I lived my life.  I spent the vast majority of my life,  except when I was very young and now when I am getting old, not wanting to or able to tell the truth.

So I ask of my self now, Truth or Dare?  Which one would I choose?

I’ll take both.

I’m daring now to tell the truth.  I’m daring you to either see it or un-subscribe.  I’m daring my self to say it, or die with everything left unspoken, hidden and stuffed inside.

I’m daring you and me to be who we are, regardless of the shame, and show up.

It takes courage.  I get it.  It is taking me a shit-load of courage to dare to say,

I’m not who you think I am.  

I’m bigger, bolder, angrier, messier, dirtier and not nearly as nice as you think I am and as I’ve led you to believe all these years.”

And I’m not going to apologize for it either anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, when I push send, I am crazy scared.  When I get your responses I am so nervous to read them.  When you un-subscribe I am scared you will tell others what a nut case I am. And through all of this I am continuing, because if I stop, I stop my self from being and becoming who I can be.

This is taking everything for me to do this.  To tell you I am a recovering addict takes everything I have.  I am risking alienating you.  I am risking you seeing all my vulnerability and judging me as weak and broken and not capable or competent.  I am risking you shunning me.  I am risking all my shame engulfing me in a torrent of desperation.

And I am doing this anyway because somewhere in my gut I know this is the most important thing I can do for myself, to stand up and dare to say,

This is who I really am.  This is the truth of me.

I am searching for truth like it is a single drop of water longing to find the ocean.  I am only one small drop of something so much bigger than my self than I could ever truly understand.  To be a part of a force that has been moving and stirring forever with enough force to nourish the souls and lives of all it comes into contact with is what I am searching for.

So I choose to dare to reveal, as best as I know how at this point in my crazy wacky life, to be truth, to reveal who I am in all my vulnerability.  I dare to have the courage in the face of all this fear to say, this is who I am and I won’t be who you think I should be anymore.

Or maybe what is truer is, ‘I won’t be who I think I should be anymore.’

I will be me