On the Subject of Squeaky Wheels – Unwarranted Advice

To those of you that know me, it should be no surprise to you that I have no trouble saying what’s on my mind. I haven’t always been like this, and to be fair, it’s gotten me into some hot water from time to time. But I’m a firm believer that if you don’t tell people what you want, you won’t ever get what you need.

I’ve been this way since my senior year of high school, it doesn’t make me proud to remember that, or to recount the year I found the resolve to change, it just kind of happened. I suppose I got sick and tired of being sick and tired all the time. I was always someone who’d do their best to fix other people’s problems, and never my own. Beginning to be vocal about what’s affecting me drastically fixed that.

I wouldn’t say I’m brutally honest, but I hold honesty just a tick below respect in terms of values. And of course, when honesty and respect get in bed together, you end up finding that fickle drug: trust. So, in my life I strive to be those things. Honest and respectful. I do this so people trust me, and so that I can trust them. There’s no net gain from it, aside from being in a position where you can rely on each other for help. Whether that be through venting issues or just knowing there’s someone who is willing to hear your side.

But you can’t have trust when you’re too afraid to speak your mind. Which is where ego comes into play, something I’m glad got physically and psychologically beaten out of me in…2008? Back to the matter at hand, a lot of people want honesty, but have an ego that will either get bruised or get in the way of telling the truth. An ego might make someone assume they know better about what their friend can handle. And maybe sometimes mine gets the best of me! I value trust, but that doesn’t mean I’m perfect at it.

By being not necessarily straight forward, but simply forward, I feel as if I’ve contributed to change, albeit in small ways. My honesty has led to me blowing the whistle on issues more times than I can count, and I’ll be honest (if I didn’t make that clear enough already), sometimes that pisses people off. I've done it for businesses, people I hardly know, my family, and yeah, some of my best friends. But I’m not going to sit around when something hurts me or hurts someone else. If I can stop a problem, I do my best to.

Is this the best way to live your life? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s even the best for me, but I do know clear air is better for breathing, and I know that certain “limiting” factors in my life: anxiety, depression, and insomnia, definitely have less of an impact if my misplaced thoughts have no real foundation.

But there is a level of guilt that comes with this style of living. And there’s the fallacy that (thankfully) I have yet to fall prey to, where you assume your actions are always the noblest. There’s also the time sink that you can slip into, especially if you spend too much time exploring other people’s opinionated bubbles.

But anytime I fail myself, or at least feel like I have, I know I’ve got the trust I’ve earned from my friends to fall back on. And I think back to the smile I put on someone’s face for standing up for them when they couldn’t stand up for themselves. And I think about what it was like to truly feel helpless. Lost in your own head that's been filled with the words of someone else.

You don’t know everybody’s story. Heck, barely anyone even knows half of mine (which is theoretically impossible due to the coastline paradox). But what we all know (probably,) is that our stories are made up of the people around us. In many circumstances, our obligations to the stranger at the bus stop and the jogger plucking past, stop at the basic laws of human decency. But do they have to? I guess I’m wrestling with the question more than I intended, but that doesn’t stop me from making sure the man crying on the train is alright. It doesn’t stop me from picking up trash while I’m on a run. And it certainly doesn’t stop me from making sure I tell a friend when something is bothering me. Some people might call that being vulnerable, but maybe I’ll write more about that later. Because I call it the best I can do.

And at the end of the day, can you ask me for anything else?