Secret Lives

Two people can keep a secret, so it is said, only if one of them is dead. In those parts of our lives that we keep only to ourselves lie our greatest secrets.

Be they built of a shame to great to share, a sadness to profound to admit, or a happiness that would be shattered if revealed, these are the feelings and moments we are quiet about. Whether they are celebrated, stored away for a rainy day or even denied and buried in the dark corners of our minds where we do not visit, these are the solitary things that we keep hidden - we tread lightly around them, knowing they might turn to dust at the slightest ray of light and somehow leave us a little empty. Even the painful secrets have their place and purpose. Whether we admit it or not, we all have them and many we will take to the grave, which some would say, is as it should be.

At the time, being fifteen and frightened, feeling invisible, unloved and very angry, my friend Trudy decided to make a statement that would get everyone's attention - she locked herself in the upstairs bathroom and calmly drew a straight edge blade across her wrists - at first there was so little blood and pain that she was surprised and she cut twice more. Then there was blood and pain, a great deal of both and she watched morbidly until she realized that she might lose enough blood to pass out and if no one were to come, might actually die. Holding her wrist under the faucet with a towel pressed hard against it, she stopped the bleeding, bandaged the cuts, cleaned up the mess. It was summer but she stayed in long sleeves, suddenly having lost the will to get even and be noticed. The seriousness of what she had tried to do scared her badly and she told no one but spent long hours thinking and wondering what she had really intended and hoped for. Each time she got close, she shut her mind, not wanting to admit to suicide - attempted, she reminded herself - for effect, hating the I'll show them ideas that cluttered her thoughts. It wasn't who she was, she told herself sternly, and it wasn't worth her life to make them sorry.

It was to be a secret she carried all her life, carried for so long she barely gave it a second thought after her teens. It had made her neither stronger nor wiser and in retrospect she came to see it as a moment of foolish self indulgence, a half hearted gesture born of youth, pride, and neglect of soul.

Scars heal, minds mend, souls can be restored.
And some secrets you need never tell.