The Worst Secret

This month's blog post could be a bit raw for some people to read. But my hope is that if you're struggling and looking for a sign that you should confide in someone safe, know that this is it. Please don't wait.

Our secret is the worst because it's ours.

We have all done things we were ashamed of. Are ashamed of. We all have little sin traumas that lurk beneath our skin and sunny smiles. Unspoken struggles that we don’t dare name. Everything about that just darkens and destroys even our happy moments. Because it doesn't lessen over time. It builds instead. Like a wave of guilt swarming over the soul until you buckle underneath it. It ebbs and flows like any wave and sometimes it's like it never happened. You can almost forget.

But it's always there waiting to flood over your head and completely consume you.

Not just the shame and the guilt.

The temptation.

The desire to do it again.

The fear you will do it again.

Anything…greed, lies, murder, theft, immorality, perversion, addiction, selfishness. It's all the same in the end. It's evil.

We all fear the seeds within ourselves, the temptation to grab a hold of these easy ways out of the evil voices urging us to do evil. But they're not easy. They're hard because they never end. They never go away. They're never banished, never severed, never forgotten. It's a tangled mess that perpetuates itself forever.

We may want to forget, to move on, to live a new, clean life, but it's never that easy. The past, which inevitably becomes the present, waits behind every man, woman, and child of this life. And we are so afraid of it. So afraid of how it makes us appear.

We keep these secrets because we must, even knowing everyone else has them too. Even knowing no one else is perfect. Even knowing others are guilty. We feel fear and shame about making our secrets known. We can't appear to be wrong. Others may have guilt, but their secrets are not our secret. Our secret is the worst because it's ours. I would tell others to do what I do not do, simply cannot make myself do. It’s the only way out, but I’m burying myself in this terrible, prideful secret.

I can't tell. I'm going to break under the weight of it, but if I get help, even though I know I should and I know they'd love me anyway, it will be disastrous. Somehow it will all go wrong and life will never be the same and the chains I wrap myself in are somehow easier than the longer road of taking one step at a time out of the pit.

But there are so many things I want to do and can't. So many roads I want to travel. So much I could be. And I'm stuck in a mire of my own making because I'm too stubborn, too afraid, too wrapped in tradition, too isolated to break out of it. To lay down my pride and die a shame death and give up my secrets. To finally be free.

If I make this decision, if I choose to give up my privacy and my so-called rights, if I open myself up to the people I love, to those people I know are safe, then I can be something. Then I can know for certain what happens. There are no what ifs afterwards. There is only a past behind me. It will always be there, but I won't be alone. And I won't be the only bearer of my burden.

Oh, God, help me.

With one cry, a new life begins.