Secrets

We all have our secrets. Some of us lock them up and bury them, while others clutch it in our hearts as we wait for somebody to spill them to. The deepest ones kill us from the inside out and they threaten to bury us alive.

We were bored. It was right before exams. Everyone was in a circle talking. And, of course, since we all needed to do something, we tried to think about what to do. I had come in relatively late into the game, so of course I hadn't heard everything.  What do you do when bored? You try to titillate yourself, try to find some sort of excitement. When it comes to teenagers, those sorts of things are sex, secrets and rumors. The one stipulation was that we all had to keep what was said in our circle in our circle. Why I participated in this I have no idea (especially when I should have been studying)

Sex is something that I can handle. Yes, some of the questions/ games pressured some of us to reveal very personal things. I held back as much as I could, but I did learn that I look like a child in comparison to some of my peers. 

But the secrets... No, I couldn't tell any of my secrets. At one point, they said, "Ask anything sexual or personal." Sexual, yes. Personal, no. Because there are some things I have locked up inside of me that I will keep until the day I die. The number of people I reveal them to are slim. if any at all. Luckily, no one asked anything too personal (unless you count the sexual questions). There was a "Never Have I Ever" one that said, "Never have I ever told anyone the worst thing I have ever done", but she didn't ask what the worst thing we had ever done was. 

I recently found out about the secrets of one of my new friends. Not necessarily a secret, per se, but not something she talks about all of the time. I knew that a lot of people keep things hidden, but for some reason, I was astounded yet again by this. And I realized that everyone has my sort of secrets.

And that made me think about the nature of secrets. People can high off of someone else's secret, blab them to the world. Secrets can be exciting and thrilling especially when shared. Maybe that's why so many people blab and why rumors happen. They're not bad necessarily, or even all that big (even PostSecret.com has its share of cute and funny secrets). Yet sometimes, secrets can trap us inside of ourselves and make us hide. Sometimes, it is when we release our secrets that we are freer to become selves that we never thought that we could become. Vulnerable in the telling perhaps, but ultimately free. Sometimes, we might think our secrets horrifying or depressing when they aren't that at all. 

I have so many secrets that I wish didn't have to be secrets. Things that I wish I could tell someone. Maybe to feel closer, maybe to feel less alone, maybe to release them. But big secrets are, well, big and can only be trusted with certain people. And I know that for others this is true as well but still, we press on.