I kid myself into thinking I have a secret. Of course it's not a secret because another person knows about it. I experieced trauma two years ago. I won't go into it. I have not told anybody except this one person. It was unavoidable. But in my little world, I'm afraid it will destroy me. I'm almost willing to kill myself over this rather than have my family or anyone else find out. Nothing sinister and i'd probably get sympathy if I "confessed" but i won't. I almost told my cousin once. I have come close many times but like I said, i save my gob for food mostly. That's the thing about secrets. They are secret because of shame, guilt,anger or whatever negative word we attribute to whatever we are hiding. My friend could use my secret against me one day. To her it shouldn't be a secret. like i said trauma, but we all define our trauma's in different ways. I hope one day is still decades away.

Still a couple of years ago, my cousin( i talk about my cousins a lot because our parents are all dead. mothers and fathers. so we are all sisters and brothers and parents to each other)and I found out our other cousin and her daughter were hiding a secret. What's more, I knew about it all along but never put the facts together. That's the other fascinating thing about secrets. When you "uncover" one, you actually find, you had all the facts right in front of you but you just couldnt connect the dots. My cousin vivian and I are the same age. Peggy and Jo are in their early 40s. Jo has a 24 yr old whose secret they had been protecting for over 4 yrs. Peggy knew because Jo confided in her. It was too much for peggy who loves to share. me and her talk a lot though i don't share what i might consider to be sensitive info. we'll probably stop when we are both dead.

She needed to get it off her chest because it was eating her up and I was asking seemigly irrelevant questions which in her mind pointed to the secret. So she told me and Vivian.We weren't shocked like she thought we'd be. We now know, They don't think we do, and we all pretend like we don't. I've said to Viv, i can't keep it in anymore, but most days I let it go. Sad. nothing sinister but there you go. each person's secret is personal.

Then there was my aunt(jo's mum) may years ago. I must have been 12yrs old, my mum and I were visiting. When she said goodnight in her nighty, i noticed something odd.(this i will confess coz it's no longer secret) She was wearing a bra. I asked my mum why her sister was wearing a bra to bed. She was baffled. It turned out a year before that, she'd had breast cancer, underwent a mastectomy and so was stuffing the one side where her breast was gone. she hadn't told her sisters, close as they were, because of shame, didn't wanna worry them,secretive, whatever. It came out (later) because my mum was ill and peggy(there she goes again) said my aunt should tell. It was nothing to be ashemed off. we were all proud she beat cancer but till the day she died, some people didnt know she was missing a breast. secrets! who said you could contain them.

And then, there are other things that people ask about, things they don't know, and I tell them. They don't know how I know, but it's because I had conversations with my mother. It's not secrets, but it's things one wouldn't expect me to know. Little things that are secret because they haven't been shared.

Are there good and bad secrets? I sometimes wonder. They say the truth shall set you free always. If that were the case, we wouldn't go to the lengths we go to, to protect our identities, our lives, our pechants, our mistakes,our bigotry, our awful personalities. We wouldn't. There would be no need for secrets.We all lull ourselves into a false sense of security thinking what we say is safe with certain people. what we do from away from prying eyes is safe. what we confess to a shrink is ok, because we can trust them.

Wrong, you all know things you don't know you know. most of the time, you can jope it never comes out, a lot of the time, you should just say to yourself "is it really as bad as I imagine it is?"

Im my case i think it's that bad. But then, it might just be my imagination. Time will tell.