Secrets

From Vegas, the city of sin:

Several months ago I was reading DC craigslist’s rnr (rant and rave) and saw a thread that hooked me into reading for several hours.

Secrets. People were posting lists of their secrets. And not just any secrets, but terrible, cruel, brutally honest facts about their lives and how they had led them. The posts would end with a coda expressing just how freeing this admission was.

I can dig that.

Sharing ideas, feelings, and guilt will always makes us feel lighter. But for all the things we tell our family and friends, there is a large amount of accumulated details that we don’t – *can’t* – share with anyone else. Those moments that see us at our weakest. That reveal the true fault lines in our lives. That show the cracks in the masks we wear. To admit these things to other people, people who know you, is to make them real. The truth – the real truth about who we are – can sometimes be quite painful. It’s difficult enough to live with without having to stare it in the face.

Imagine we all carry around a sack filled with those things we can’t share with anyone. We hardly notice the weight because the increase in size is so gradual. A lie here, a hidden fact there. But this invisible sack does grow heavier. We stoop just a tiny bit more every day. Those people posting their secrets had found a way to tear a small hole in the sack and let the worst of it out.

I envy them. I try to be honest in my life. With myself most of all. But I’ve kept enough to myself to create a noticeable burden – my own sack full of misery to carry around.

Here is the start of my list of secrets:

1. I didn’t cry at either of my grandmothers’ funerals. I fear it is because I am too self-absorbed to truly mourn for others.

Feel like dumping some of it out on the ground? Go ahead. Leave an anonymous comment.