secrets.

let me speak honestly here for a second. 

the last two years, i've been exploring secrets and the lives they lead. so i've been chasing people's secrets and following them down down down, like worms into the deepest flesh of a person where it's sunk its teeth. and it has brought me down down down, into places where the truth suddenly becomes very murky, not in what it is inherently, but by melting the world around it until there's no distinct place to put it.

there are people who carry secrets because they have serious things to hide and don't want to be associated with them.

there are others, who because of oppressive childhood experiences, carry secrets for the sake of having secrets, so that no matter what was taken from them, no matter what was withheld from them, there was some power in resistance of domination when they always had something that was theirs that could never be taken away or touched -- tightly kept secrets guarded by only themselves. sometimes this is all a person has to survive when there's a force in the world trying to break them.

i'm one of those people. no matter how much people and circumstances tried to break my spirit, no matter how many times i got pushed into a corner and held there to see if i would break, i always knew they could never touch my thoughts, my mind, things known only to me. the things that only i knew were the magical stones i carried with me, whether dark, scarred chunks or smooth, marbled rounds. in some ways, i superstitiously trusted their magical powers to keep me from ever letting go of myself as long as i in turn kept them to myself and guarded them unwaveringly. 

the key to keeping secrets is to not let the world know you have any. let it suspect, but don't let it ever catch you.

i have secrets. so many secrets that i've forgotten about many of them and that they were even secrets. i'm not a liar by intention, though by semantics, i know that i am. but i've never held secrets that hurt other people, only occasionally, myself. my collection of secrets is compulsive. some secrets are so small and pointless. i'll tell someone i had a donut for breakfast when i had a croissant, because in that moment, i didn't want them to know what i had for breakfast just because. some secrets regard who i am and where i'm going, not necessarily because i don't want people to know, but because i may not be sure yet myself and i don't want them to tell me. some secrets are memories of things that happened, some secrets are events i created purposefully knowing i planned to create a secret. some secrets involve not allowing people to paint an accurate picture of where i come from. some secrets deflect people's ability to paint a full picture of who i am.  but there aren't bad intentions with my need for secrets. it's just what i need. deflection, protection. a place only i know. a place only i own. it's what i know. it's having things that no one can ever touch unless you choose to allow them. the very fact that you have control over something that allows you the space and freedom to make a choice, such a simple choice, is sometimes all the control over yourself you were able to carve out for a long time in your life.

i try keeping the fact i compulsively keep secrets a secret. it helps by appearing to be a gossip. in a way, if you are an information sieve and you're the wildfire with which news spreads, no one really questions whether you have the ability to keep a secret. they just assume in a way--quite rightly--you don't. but i know when to keep a loved one's secret as tightly and loyally as my own and sometimes if you really listen to me, on one level i'm being 100% truthful, so truthful that sometimes people have no idea what i'm talking about, and on another level, i'm not really saying anything. people will either respond to one or the other and that's how i get to know what kind of people they are.

my secrets have lives. 

they take me to places i would otherwise never see, meet people i would otherwise never meet. sometimes those people scare me, sometimes they enlighten me. sometimes they teach me a better point of view. sometimes they help me strengthen my point of view. my secrets have propelled me not in a positive or negative direction per se, but in a direction of more--higher faster stronger deeper. i always thought they weren't a big deal. i try not to get myself in any situations where i create really bad, dark secrets, and at the end of the day, it's like a secret collection of anything--some people like star wars figures, i liked collecting things that only i know.

maybe this is karma.

if right now i'm staring at this aspect of myself in the face, projected, firsthand experiencing how annoying, frustrating, devastating it is for people who want to get close to someone who keeps secrets for the sake of keeping secrets, then i feel very, very sorry for having not had more self-understanding. i feel very sorry if i have hurt anyone because my compulsion to keep secrets was more important to me than letting them in and truly being with them. in a way, i understand it now, that it was about autonomy and not being completely dominated while i was growing up, but now, i don't know how much it serves me outside of having an emotionally masturbatory quality to it. i want to change this.