The Part of Yourself You Have Never Told Anyone About

There is something about you that nobody knows. A thought you have had, a feeling you hide, or a desire you don’t admit to. Something that’s true but needs to stay secret because telling it would make you unsafe somehow. The secret is protecting you or protecting someone else or protecting the image people have of you.

The secret makes you incomplete around other people. You are missing a piece because that piece stays hidden. People know parts of you but not all of you because the hidden part is too risky to show. The people closest to you are still further away than they could be because of the secret.

The weight of carrying the secret is background weight. It’s always there, it’s there in conversations that get close to the truth and you have to change direction, and it’s there when someone could understand but you can’t let them understand because understanding would require explaining the secret. It’s there all the time even when you are not thinking about it directly.

Part of you wants someone to know, part of you wants to put the secret down and stop being the only person who carries it, but the other part knows that telling would change things. It would change how people see you. It would change your relationships. It would change the safety you feel around people, and so you keep it.

The secret becomes part of your identity even though nobody else knows about it. It shapes how you interact with people even though they don’t know what’s shaping you. It influences your choices and your reactions even though nobody understands the influence. It’s a fundamental part of you that stays fundamentally hidden.

You are not sure if you’ll ever tell anyone. The secret might stay with you for the rest of your life and that’s probably fine. Most people carry secrets. Most people have parts of themselves that stay private. Most people exist in a state of being partially known and partially hidden.

But the hidden part still costs something. It costs the possibility of being completely known. It costs the connection that comes from full vulnerability. It costs the relief of finally not carrying something alone. The secret protects you but it also isolates you and both of those things are true at the same time.

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