George Orwell once said, “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
But what happens when you can no longer keep pushing that secret down and away?
When it starts to eat at your soul and climbs into your mind just a little more every day.
It eats away at everything that is good in you, only leaving destruction behind.
Forcing itself into your thoughts, nagging at you to pay some attention to it.
It keeps going on and on until you can no longer ignore it -it just gets stronger and stronger.
You can’t keep it all inside anymore. The fear, the guilt, the confusion.
But like Orwell has implied, once you let yourself understand and ponder that secret, you can no longer keep it from those around you.
Once you admit your secret to yourself, you put yourself at risk of others finding out.
Have you ever had a secret that hurts so much, but you’re afraid it will hurt more if you tell?
Wondering who you would lose to this secret, and who you would gain, if anyone.
How would she react? How would he react?
How would your sister, your brother, your mother, your father react?
Would they embrace you and let you know that it’ll be okay?
Or will they look down on you and things will never be the same?
You wonder what they will think about you, how you will be treated, how things will be different once they know.
What if this secret had the power to change everything?
Not only how others will think about you, but how you will think about yourself.
Will confessing this secret make you stronger? Or will it make you weaker and more vulnerable?
In every confession is a weakness, a soft spot, that you are now exposing to the outside world.
You risk rejection, humiliation, discrimination, Pain.
But is it worth it? To hide what you know is true, due to the fear of what everyone else will think?
Will you let them judge you for your past, the mistakes you’ve made, the secrets you’ve hidden?
Or will you tell the world your secret, for the pain of hiding it has become too much to handle.
It has become so much that you would risk the reaction of those around you?
Is it true that some secrets were never meant to be told, and some questions were meant to be left unanswered?
And how do we really know if it’s right? To admit this secret to everyone, and when to do so if it is.
Our secrets can either hold us down, or keep up standing tall.
It’s the decision of whether or not to tell these secrets that can break us.