The Secret is in the Telling

“Do you promise not to tell?” she asked me.

“Yes. I promise,” I said.

As a child, a secret was something innocent. A crush on a boy, a hidden treasure spot, or stealing a candy bar. But as I grew older, secrets became more serious. My friends stopped whispering in my ear about how they’d talked to their crush that day, or how they had broken their mom’s favorite lamp and blamed it on the dog. Instead, they whispered about other things: sexual encounters, pregnancy scares, depression, drinking and drugs.

And then there were the secrets that they didn’t tell. The ones I always knew but was too afraid to talk to them about. The secrets that left rippled seams, tiny as a stitch--but not invisible.

These were the kind of secrets that involved excusing oneself right after eating an extra large container of ice cream, and then returning with pink vomit on your collar. Like a magnet, my eyes would stare at the vomit: that imperfect stitch that unravels it all. But I dare not look at it for too long, so she doesn’t think I know. It’s a secret I have known for many years, but one that she glosses over with jokes about indigestion. A secret known but never told.

These were the kind of secrets involving a sadness so deep that you can’t speak it because you think no one could understand. “Please just come out and meet me for coffee?” I would ask. “I’m so sorry,” she would say through muffled tears. “Not tonight. I’m not feeling well.” And the next night would be the same. And the night after that too. Until every day and night she was trapped in sadness, and the sadness gripped her so tightly that no one could get their arms in anywhere, even to hug her.

They were the kind of secrets that are held for so many years, buried and confused with guilt and childhood. The ones she can barely tell you because what he did to her over and over again was so horrible. The secret she held on to, through childhood, and into adulthood, until she was out of the house. Away from him.

They were also the kind of secrets about a relationship filled with mean words, name calling, belittling, constant hurt, and the sad realization that she doesn’t want to leave. "I know I deserve better," she told me, carefully balancing the secrets above her head like the heaviest ceiling tiles. "But I love him."

The kind of secrets that were strategically hidden above her skirt on her upper leg and were only revealed on accident when the blood soaked through her gray leggings. “I don’t do it all the time,” she said casually. “Just sometimes, when life gets to be too much and I need to feel something real. They really aren’t even that deep.”

Some of these secrets resolve themselves. A step-father was imprisoned thanks to brave girls. A girl realized she needed support to overcome her anxiety and agoraphobia. And, after a cut a little too deep, a smart doctor intervened.

But some secrets remained.

As a friend, how do you respond to secrets when you do find them out (however they are revealed to you )? How do you help a friend who is too deeply entrenched in their secret to realize that they are loved, they are strong, they are brave, and they deserve happiness? How do you help them realize that unless they are willing to become accountable for their own life, and unless they are willing to face their darkest secret and leave that secret behind, the secret will win?

And letting the secret win means trading your life for a life of pain.

“Promise you won’t tell?” she asked again.

“This isn't an innocent secret anymore. You are an adult now, you choose your path. If you won't change your situation, no one will do it for you. But if you choose to let the secret win, the secret will escalate and the ceiling will fall in. It always does. You will have chosen pain as you wait for that inevitable moment when the ceiling falls in, and even worse pain when the moment arrives. All I can do for you is be here to hold your hand.

The secret is in the telling, but this life is yours to choose.”