The Rose Poet:
We all have our secrets, some that go with us to the grave and others that claw their way to the surface.
Some will tell you a person lives three lives, and no, that’s not a reincarnation statement. It’s that each person lives three separate lives: their public, their private, and their secret life. Confusing, I know. Why would a person have so many different versions of themselves? Wouldn’t it be easier to be your true, authentic self? The simple answer would be yes, but no one likes it simple.
Your public life is just the surface, a mask, marked and colored – painted to distract the outsiders looking in through eyes like glass walls. How deep they’re able to explore is dependent on the person being looked at and the person doing the looking. Are they kind and trustworthy? Will they accept all the parts I hide of my true, authentic self?
When you start to peel away the layers of a person, you may discover parts that only a few are ever allowed to see. But even then, most people only reveal what they want you to see.
The private life is for those in the closest inner circle, those who do not cast judgment, or those who are your supporters. Those who share the same ideals, passions, and perspectives. Accepting all your flaws, at least the ones they know about.
Acceptance is all any of us want, but there will always be someone who doesn’t meet the status quo, an outcast, or a misfit. People would rather discover and uproot the shattered, torn, skeletal remains locked away in closets and buried beneath the trees to find an issue with those who live out of bounds.
Then you have the secret life. The really dark and twisted parts of yourself that no one will understand. The truly misunderstood, decaying pieces are left in fragments scattered on the floor inside the home with boarded windows and rotting wood.
The secrets you hold nearest to you, whether it’s a lie you told to keep from getting in trouble when you were a kid, or the haunting nightmares that you can’t tell anyone about, because it would mean you’re broken. It might be a desire too taboo to name. Whatever the secret, it holds power; secrets hold power. The longer you keep them, the more power they have over you. They’ll eat you alive from the inside out, until you break, becoming nothing more than a shell of the person you used to be, or the falsity of who you claimed - wanted to be.
Perhaps none of it was false, though; perhaps you just lost your way in the world, trying to conform to the image and idea of the person you thought the world thought you ought to be. A good friend of mine once said, “All things done in the dark will always come to the light.” Don’t let the secrets have the power. Don’t let the secrets drown you in darkness; confront them when they come into the light.