Secrets: What happens when we keep them? When we share them? When we don't even know them...
HAIKU for the Artemis II astronauts
Living in such close quarters for nine days would make having secrets from each other virtually impossible, I imagine…
I have been thinking about secrets because of this quote used recently as a writing prompt: “Everybody has secrets. The only difference is the damage done when they come out.” [Dede, CIA agent in TREASON, Season 1/episode 2] One person in the group wrote about “gentle gossip”, while I wrote about secrets that, sometimes, we don’t even know we are keeping...
THE SECRETS IN OUR LIVES: sweet nothings / explosive somethings
Some secrets are dark and dirty,
some are light and fun,
others difficult and dangerous
With any given secret, there is a keeper, a holder; and there is an ideal recipient of that secret — even if the holder never makes it as far as putting the secret in that person’s hands, the holder knows in their heart of hearts that that one person (or maybe several people or possibly an organization like the police or the government) should have — must have, must be given that information being held, being withheld from the light of day by the holder of the secret.
There is tension in that holdingin that silence
This tension between the holding and the releasing of the secret is a taught line between perceived safety through silence and presumed release from the burden of holding that secret —
safety of another
When we know something (that we think) no one else knows, we are a fool to believe that by keeping tight hold of that precious information we are keeping ourself safe. For what secret does only one person know, ever, in this world?
Forty-one years ago, coming out to my family was hard, not because I feared rejection but because saying out loud to my mother something so deeply personal was scary and fragile and so so new to me — the words, the truth, the sharing. So it was relief tinged with just a hint of let-down when my mother said, I know. Your sister and I have talked about this.
My secret, held first from my own self and then from others — so long held, was not a secret at all.
Dark and dirty secrets like abuse and violence and infidelity include, by their nature, more than one person. Any secrets involved are, therefore, known and kept by more than one person.
The other day, I watched an interview with Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman whose husband drugged her, raped her and then invited dozens of other men to rape her, too. In this horrific case of secrets that lasted a decade, many people — men — knew; the lone woman involved knew nothing until she was told by the police, no less. In this case of more than one person knowing the evil criminal secret, what remains unknown for us all still today is how, on earth, Monsieur Pelicot could do such a thing. That secret is maybe unanswerable even by him, in his prison cell.
Every day, watching the news, the secret known across the globe is confirmed once more: the leader of the free world, the “emperor” of us all, if you will — that emperor is wearing no clothes. He makes less sense with each passing day, exploding global problems beyond repair. It is clear, evident: He is transparently beyond his capacity, everyone knows this yet no one who could make it so speaks aloud the secret — the president must go.
This secret, known by millions, is unspoken by the one man himself who should. Obfuscation as survival strategy puts our world in danger.
And there we have it —
Holding them
Speaking them
Splitting open our own small world with words or stories that bring light to darkness in that world and, maybe, beyond.
In that light truth can shine.
But in that bright and blinding light, two things are true at once —
Truth can be hard to hearTruth can be hard to live with
So, secrets we keep —
The light and fun,
The difficult and dangerous
............................................................................................................................................
To receive my weekly blogpost in your inbox, use the SUBSCRIBE feature (above, in the left-hand column), or email fiveyearsawriter at gmail dot com. Put SUBSCRIBE in the subject line.
Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.
Photo by Daphné Be Frenchie on Unsplash
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. Please be respectful.