Set Your Secrets Free

I am often asked how I dare write the posts I write, how I manage to disclose so much, to be so open in this space. Even (perhaps especially) my close  friends are often shocked by what I’m willing to share with you. A dear friend who has both my respect and admiration told me recently that if he ever dated me, he would expect me not to write about it. Before, during or after.  The wasbund did not appreciate my openness regarding our relationship, and while I believe that his protest had more to do with the harsh reality of my perspective laid out on the page, I consider those posts to be among my mistakes in the marriage. It’s hard enough without an audience. He also said that whoever falls in love with me will fall in love with my writing as well, because it is a real and important part of who I am.

Truthfully, I do not share everything. There are details, facets, situations, realities that I do not reveal in this public space. A girl has to keep some secrets, especially when she’s dating, working for a corporation, and facing the very real possibility of building a business clientele.

Why, then, do I choose to share things others would keep private?

I could tell you that my parents prized honesty above nearly all else. To the extent that my punishments were doubled for lying about my transgressions. I could tell you that sharing helps me to let go, that in telling you these stories I am better able to put them in perspective. I could say that I’m kind of an attention-whore. I might tell you that one of my favorite quotes is: “A story untold could be the one that kills you.” - Pat Conroy. All of those things would be true.

They are all secondary to the biggest truth.

I need to be seen and heard, that I might be understood.

I need to reclaim the pride I have in who I am, what I’ve seen, and where I come from.

If I hide these things from you, from the world, I also hide them from myself.

My three o’ clock in the morning voices tell me that these stories, these hurts, these shames are the reason I will never be truly loved. They whisper that these stories are proof of my unworthiness, of my brokenness, of my failure. They remind me that the people who love and appreciate me do so because they don’t know yet- they haven’t seen me as I am. They convince me that these stories are my fault, my doing, the result of being defective somehow.

So I lay there in the twilight, in the dark darkness and let them torture me. I believe them. I cry and gasp and let myself become convinced that no one could ever love me properly if they really knew me. I take the blame and the shame as my blankets- warm and comforting with their familiar weight. I believe their story, those awful voices, and I cry myself to sleep.

I wake up with puffy red rimmed eyes and an overwhelming urge to construct an insurmountable wall between myself and the world around me. To insulate myself from more disappointment, rejection, pain and sorrow.

There is, for me,  only one way to survive that, to avoid falling down a rabbit hole of anxiety, depression and paranoia.

I have to hold that story up to the light. I have to write it out, write it down, release it to the scrutiny of theme and sensation and narrative. I have to give it to you, to myself, to the collective. Shame can’t survive the light. It dissolves, it melts away. As soon as I hit publish, the shame is gone.

Then you read it, and you comment, you email me, you tweet me, you send me messages on Facebook. You empathize, sympathize, encourage, confess. I kill the shame, and then you fill that space with love, insight, solidarity, support and encouragement.

When I get a little disclosure remorse, which does happen from time to time, I only have to think of one of the emails I’ve received from complete strangers who take a moment out of their own busy and complicated lives to share their feelings, their reactions, their own stories. It mattered to them, and that is worth whatever disadvantage being so open brings.

Thanks for helping me set my secrets free.

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