29 feb 2012

the irony of anonymity is that it allows for stunning honesty. well, i mean, aside from the "name" thing. when people don't know who you are, you can tell them all sorts of things. secret things. secret truths. would you like to know a secret truth about me? okay. i will tell you this: my name isn't really ace.

secrets are... well... secretive. they're purposefully hidden, put into the dark, tucked away. sometimes we put things away and don't look at them ourselves. sometimes we put things away so that we can look at them ourselves. some things are only for me. some things are for no one, not even me.

confidences are different. something personal is kept confidential, doesn't mean it's a secret. just means it's none of your business. my social security number is confidential, but it's not secret. secret has a connotation of immorality, something wrong that's buried, a skeleton in the closet.

everyone has secrets, things they're extremely reluctant to share, and in some cases, reluctant to even think about. funny thing is, if we were to pour them all out there, empty our souls like pockets turned out into the ashtray on the dresser, what we would see is that these secrets we each keep tight, these demons that haunt us individually, these precious dark treasures that we each hold dearly in our innermost selves... all these secrets are nothing more than more of the same.