Wednesday Madhouse - Keeping Secrets.

I think everyone has secrets, not other peoples secrets, but secrets that you personally own. I know I have and lots of them are from my childhood and lots of them are things I am none too proud of. It's amazing how they stay with you. It must mean that in one way or another they either haunted you or changed you. I can't remember what I had for dinner on my 12th birthday but I can remember things I've kept secret from that year.

There is only one other person who knows almost all of my secrets and the ones they don't know are the ones temporarily misfiled or forgotten until something unearths them, and that is M. Over the 28 years we've been together we have talked about everything and secrets on both sides have gradually all been uncovered. I think that is a healthy thing when the person you love best (not counting kidlets here) knows every facet of who are now and what made you that way. There is something so reassuring to be know you're accepted warts and all and there is something so comforting when having one of these discussions your other half says something like "Well if you think that's bad ....then listen to what I did."

I can recall quite often saying during one of our deep and meaningfuls "I've never told anyone this but..." and he has never judged or recoiled from me. It makes you realise that maybe the stuff you have in your past isn't quite as bad as you thought, and that, if you have learned from it, then it had a purpose and that by owning up to it to someone else you can move past it and bin it.

It always helps me to rationalise that the stuff that was bad at 12 or 13 is pretty small potatoes now and that holding stuff inside isn't always the best way, plus some of them seem so funny and bizarre when you finally say them out loud, that not speaking of them has internally demonized them beyond measure, letting them out is letting go.

Not all my secrets are trivial though and some of them belong to others and their behaviour around me or towards me. Some have maimed me internally and some I will have to carry forever as they shaped me. I realised that when I came to accept that I am agoraphobic and that that stems from some of my secrets. However, the realisation of this is also part of the treatment and maybe one day the cure. Those who have added to this burden, may gave burdened me, but I'll be damned if I'll ever let them beat me.

N.B. I picked 12 as just a random age - it was no worse or better than any other age for secrets but for one reason or another it is a year I remember clearly.