2007 Confessions: #4--Posting Secrets
I know, I know, it's May 1st, and I'm a slacker and haven't posted my April confession yet. I know you've all been waiting with baited breath, and were disappointed when by midnight last night my April confession had not yet been posted.
Part of the reason is that for the month of April, I left my current home and went to spend a month in my home town. Since the main aim of this blog is to keep in touch with the people "back home" it didn't really make much sense to blog while I was there with them. Also, I didn't want to blog about a secret when everyone was right there and could ask me in person about the secret if they so chose.
This is the thing about secrets: Even if you let them out a bit, they're still embarrassing, which is why they've been kept secret, right?
Here is my confession for April. As you all know, I am a fan of the website postsecret.com and of the postsecret books which have been published with secrets that people have put on postcards and sent to Frank Warren. I really don't have any really juicy secrets--I just don't--but I did come up with one secret back in August of last year, which I put together on a postcard and sent in to Frank. I told my family that if the secret ever got published, I would tell them--not which secret it was, but just that it was on the website that week or in the book or whatever. My secret did, indeed, get posted on the website, and I said NOTHING! I just let the secret go by without saying a word to anyone about it. I just couldn't bear the idea of someone guessing which secret was mine.
So, did creating a post-secret and sending it in make me feel enlightened or even different at all? I don't know. I find other people's secrets so beautiful and inspiring--even the painful ones. I guess I hope that mine felt like that to someone else, even though it was just embarrassing to me.
Anyway. I have lately started downloading some of the secrets that I like the best--I try to pick at least one each week, but sometimes pick none, and sometimes pick many. Here, without Frank's permission, so I hope it's okay with him, are a few of the secrets that I have liked the most throughout the last few months--the beautiful and the scary and the sad--and maybe, I'm not promising anything, but maybe mine is in here too.
posted by Allie at 7:08 PM
5 Comments:
Reading through the secrets I find that there are some that I'm completely convinced aren't yours, and on the ones I'm not sure about I try and think of it from your point of view to figure out how it would apply to you. I think I know which one is yours. If you ever want to tell me for sure, I'd love to hear it. And if you never do, I think that would be okay, too. It;s funny because I'm not usually like that, a lot of times I'd be dying to know, but in this case I feel contented just knowing that you've told us as much as you have, and that maybe sometime later you'll tell us the rest.
I like the penny one. It reminds me of our screen play and I think that is probably why you like it too, but maybe not.
SSFB
I am with Kjersti that I think I know which one might be yours, and I am curious to see if I am right, but if you never wanted to tell me, I am alright with that too. I think it is awesome that you sent something in at all and I love that it was actually posted! Good job Allie!
I think it is amazing that PostSecret, out of all the tens of thousands of secrets it receives, chose to post your secret. I don't know what Frank's criteria is for choosing what he posts, but yours made the cut. If it were me, I would post secrets that I thought had an important message to convey to others who are carrying heavy secret burdens by themselves. I don't think people send their secrets in to be in a contest to see who has the most shocking or horrific secret. I think they just need to tell someone who will listen and not judge them. It is a little sad that they think they have to be anonymous and that the listener has to be a stranger before they can let it out. I wonder what that says about our "looking-good" society. Anyway, if your secret really is one of the ones you have listed, I don't think you have to hide it from your family. We all love you tremendously and think you are awesome. We look up to you, not because we believe you are perfect, but because we know your heart and we see who you are -perhaps even better than you do. Whenever someone admits to a mistake or tells a secret, it gives others permission to admit mistakes and tell secrets. And Allison, as I've told numerous dream groups, there is nothing inside you that I am afraid to look for inside myself. That is why Post Secret works for people. We all see our own humanness when we hear other people's secrets.
Anyway, after all that, I do think I know which secret is yours because of other things I have read that you have written. It is a "short story" with a powerful ending, if I am right. But all of the secrets you have listed, because you have identified with the writer, tell us something about you. I have always thought you were beautiful inside and out, and I KNOW I am right about THAT.
Hm... I have it narrowed down to two. There is one on there that I REALLY hope is not yours, but I guess it could be. I have a secret that I bet no one would think would be mine... or maybe they would. Who knows? SO, if you feel like it, give me a call and let's discuss. :) It's not like the rest of us our perfect... who are we to judge you?
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