Secrets
By Thomas Ray
Keep your secrets. Hold them tight, and only give them away when you know--know as firmly as anything else--that they won't be used against you. The exhilaration of shared secrets is rarely worth the potential shame when the excitement fades.
Containing secrets brings conflicting feelings. Firstly, stubborn confidence; you're keeping something inside and you're succeeding. You're strong. Second, resigned pain. It hurts to be the only one who knows something special.
It makes me think of one time I cried. We were visiting family and it was time to say goodbye... Half my tears were about saying goodbye, the other half a result of my homesick heart. I wanted to leave, and I wanted to stay.
Secrets are like that.
Maybe secrets want to be known. Maybe they don't die when they're spoken, maybe they just change, mutate, transform into something more beautiful, more dangerous, and more fragile than before. They become subject to the winds and waters of whatever people they're revealed to, and we, being humans, can't help but dash them against the rocks and cliffs waiting just within reach.
Maybe secrets want to be known at the right time. Maybe they know best.
Or maybe it just depends on who you share them with. Perhaps some people are close enough that no secret could tear them apart.
...
Keep your secrets. I'll keep mine.
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