‘Truth' And Consequences

Honesty’s the best policy, of course—unless someone uses it to tear you down.

- Elizabeth Gilbert

TWENTY YEARS AGO, a friend and I were having dinner at a Mexican restaurant when she suddenly asked me, “Liz, can I be brutally honest with you about something?”

Here’s how dumb I was back in my 20s: I actually said, “Yes! Of course!”

At which point my friend took a shiv out of her purse and expertly slid it right between my ribs.

Okay, to be fair, she didn’t literally stab me. She merely told me that I was selfish and lazy, and also that I would probably never be able to make a living as a writer, and moreover that nobody liked my boyfriend. Oh yeah, one last thing: My hair didn’t look very good. My jaw is too big to carry off a pixie cut, apparently. Makes my face look all weird and out of balance.

As I sat there gasping for oxygen over my half-eaten fajit as and trying to stem my internal emotional bleeding, my friend reached across the table and pushed aside the salsa so she could place her hand on mine for emphasis.

“I’m the only person who cares about you enough to tell you the truth,” she said. “That’s why it’s important that you keep me around. Everybody else just blows smoke up your ass.”