I’m trying very hard to keep my mouth, or my pen, shut. My fingers type away in a desire to talk and I find my brain fighting which most certainly would be a betrayal. Not just a betrayal to others but a betrayal to me. Do I open up and risk the backlash, or do I keep silent? It wouldn’t be a judgement. I don’t have it in me. People prefer their secrets and it seems to me there have been a lot of them as of late.

Secrets occur for many reasons. To hide a betrayal for one. To hide one’s shame. To prevent being judged. The last one is usually the type I keep to myself. Do not show my weaknesses, my fears, my mistakes. Keep them locked away from all. Those are my biggest secrets. I have to wonder, these secrets, who does it help and who does it protect?

I can say mine may protect me, but they are not helping anyone else by keeping them locked within. I believe we learn, and others learn, from our experiences. If I keep something secret, what is anyone learning? That the shame should be held onto and the fear of judgement heeded?

I can handle, I think, betraying myself, my feelings. A secret to keep from betraying another, from hurting another, those secrets remain. I am not here to confess everything. I may want to scream it from the highest mountain in order to help those that may feel the same loss, but I will not betray. Despite the voices egging me on. No, betrayal, that is a reason for a secret not to be displayed. It is not my place to reveal another person’s secrets.

These are his secrets, not mine. I wanted to scream out these secrets to not be so frightened. I wanted people to know, it’s okay to reach out. It’s okay to feel shame as long as you use it to get yourself out of the situation causing you such pain. It’s okay to worry about judgement. He was not alone in his secrets. In this way, they were no longer his secrets. They were some of mine and some of the people I have known in the travels of my life.

To have been in some of the places, institutions, that I have been in, I have heard many people’s secrets exposed. They, I, needed that to heal. Their secrets helped me and mine helped them. I am, once again, working through secrets that have kept me in my darkness. I worry about betraying myself through exposure. I want to lose the shame. I need to lose the fear of judgment. That is one of the reasons my pen continues to write, my fingers continue to type.

Through my openness of my secrets, or what I think are secrets, I want people to be able to see the silence within themselves or another. I want them to feel understood. Secrets aren’t all bad, but some of them are. Those are the ones I want to break my silence for. The ones we can learn from. We all have them. What is keeping you silent?

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