Secret-sharer

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You know how I put most everything out there, right?  I was thinking about that personality trait of mine during a recent "get back into it, dammit" (after a 4 day stomach bug hiatus), run, and realized that I think I spill so much because I believe secrets have far more power to hurt than the truth. Examples?  Oh, yes, I've got a couple...

The things that have most deeply driven a fatal wedge in my relationships were secrets.  As a preteen, I learned some big stuff about my family history.  Nothing really worth repeating here, and nothing maliciously scandalous, just information  I (over)heard from family friends rather than from the adult I deserved to hear it from.  And once I heard this history, this story of how I came to be, I didn't know what to do with it.  I couldn't imagine raising the topic with a woman I always found unapproachable, so I swallowed it and allowed it gurgle and bubble inside of me, occasionally feeling it escape in an episode of bad behavior or a rebellious act. Not good.  

Maybe I would have ultimately moved beyond, or around, the crevasse  in this primary relationship, but, unfortunately, that wasn't the last time that a previously unknown was unveiled in a such a way.   Each of these spikes nailed  the door between she and I that much more tightly closed, and, at this point in my life,  I am content to let it remain unopened. I guess it's true about the physical spaces between the known and the unknown being described as the Doors, huh?

In more recent years there have been other secrets kept from me, and perpetuated by me, and they've all prompted more pain than honesty ever would have caused.  The power of those secrets has torn down structures originally designed to provide shelter for a lifetime. Or two lifetimes, perhaps.

I don't want anyone to have the ability to rock my world by revealing secrets about me or those I care about.  When someone on the periphery owns knowledge that those who are most deeply involved are lacking, the exchange of power is irrefutable.  And potentially devastating.

I'll keep your secrets, my friends, but as for mine, I'm sharing.