“In life, we all have an unspeakable secret, and irreversible regret, and an unreachable dream.” Diego Marchi
I currently have strep throat. I have taken my nightly cocktail of drugs and shortly I will feel myself slipping away to reruns of Sex and the City. You know, the TBS ones sans nakedness. So as long as I’m conscious, you just put your feet up, pour yourself a glass, and forget all about your problems while I wax poetic about the mundane details of this life talk about mine. I’m your Carrie Bradshaw and this is my way-too-personal-sex column. Of sorts.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about secrets.
Secrets hold great power. Once revealed, they can disrupt your entire life. Although many of us hold secrets in a negative light, there is such a thing as good secrets. Example:
- I’ve been in love with you for years. Oh, and I’m perfect.
- Grandma died. And you’re the sole heir to her bagillions.
- Even though you said you didn’t want to get married, your boyfriend is proposing to you in Paris!
*Sorry, based on experience that last one was a poor example.
That being said, these Manolo Blahniks have been carrying a lot of secrets around. So many, actually, that they might be reaching their secret holding capacity. I mean, I wouldn’t want to break a heel. And they aren’t just my secrets. They’re your secrets too. And don’t you think that with the friendship should go the secrets? Why should I have to tote around moldy secrets of people that I don’t even associate with any more?
So while I was compiling a list of your secrets to blog about, I took a seat next to my giant New York apartment window, and in true Sex and the City format, I stared at my laptop and said to myself:
I can’t help but wonder… what are my secrets?
*My family always wondered why my cat BamBam looked a little strange. When I was 5, I wanted her to look like Heathcliff so I bit a chunk of her ear off.
*Speaking of ears, my right ear is significantly larger than my left. Like, my left ear is normal size; my right ear is ridiculous. I discovered this in high school, but my parents had kept it a secret since I was a baby. I always wear my hair down and no one is the wiser.
*My senior year of high school, I was always late for my curfew. Every time, I told my mom that a cop pulled me over. Every time, she believed me. I don’t know if this is a credit to my persuasive skills, or a testament to my poor driving ability. Truth is, I was driving in cars with boys. Actually, one boy. And I found it impossible to leave him.
*I think Blake Mycoskie is the single-most attractive man on the planet. He’s generous, brilliant, well traveled and scruffy. He went on vacation to Argentina and saw hundreds of children without shoes, so he decided to dedicate his life to changing that. He now runs a successful business, TOMS, while traveling the world and giving people shoes.
*I wrote a paper in 6th grade about Pearl Harbor. By my second year of college, I had handed that paper in to about 8 different teachers along the way. What alarms me, is that I never even edited it.
*I dig the Twilight saga.
*In high school, when I worked at Chuck E Cheese, I would purposely misspell the names on the birthday cakes so we could eat them. They were so, so good.
Well, my dears. That’s all you get for today. Maybe someday I’ll tell you my big secrets. Maybe even the ones involving boys. But right now, I’d rather pass out. Of course, I’d love to hear some of yours – I promise I won’t blog about them. Right away.
Happy Memorial Day!
secrets? nah. just the ones i won’t tell.
she is clearly involved in a deeply rituatistic friendship bonding.
maggie- i really, really wish that were the case. and yea, i bet you’re full of secrets!
friggin – l.a.m.e. of course you have secrets. come back with a better answer, spanks.
fifi- um. WOW. thanks for sharing. i think we can all relate to the whole forbidden love ordeal, and the one who got away. …
Sheez, I have a bantam called BamBam….hmm, but if it had ears I don’t think I would bite one off 🙁
Secrets????…hmm nope, nothing that comes to mind 🙁
She’s stealing your friggin drink!!!!!
A secret I held for 18 years!
I leaved in New York City in the late 80. My wife and I were leaving on 24th street and Lexington avenue. I love NYC, she didn’t so sometime in 1990 we decided after our son was born that we would be moving to Rockford where her family leaved. Early that year one day my wife introduced me to our new neighbor Helena! Helena was from Sweden, was a supermodel, spoke French and was in high demand from the fashion industry. Now you are probably thinking the worst of me but don’t judge me until the end when I tell you THE BIG SECRET. I worked a lot and was not at home a lot so my wife and Helena hanged out with each other. I would come home and Helena would be there all the time. The three of us became great friends over the following months. Helena looked like an angel, her long blond hair, deep blue eyes and soft voice were so magically seductive. We share a lot of stories about our lives, we had both leaved in Paris at different times and the conversation in French were even more charming. In April of 1991 my wife and my son moved to Rockford and I stayed in NYC to finish my job until the end of August. So from April to August Helena and I hangout all the time, I would cook dinner and we would go away up State New York at my friend Joel’s house in the Catskill the same things as we did with my wife.
We both enjoyed each other friendship but inside of me something else was growing and I couldn’t stop it from growing. Was it lust, was it love, was it vanity but whatever it was, it was very powerful. One weekend we drove upstate New York and we got into a very bad thunderstorm. The lightning illuminating the whole sky and the heavy rain covering the road but the four by four got us there safely. At one point when the thunder roared into the night Helena grabbed my arm, I put my hand on her arm and comforted it her for a minute. We arrived around 2 am and went to bed in separate bedrooms. The house was so beautiful, it was a stone house build in 1750, as you walked on the wood floor the cracking of the wood would pierce the silence of the night. Lying in bed I could not stop thinking how close I felt to Helena. I was in love. An impossible love, I could not allow myself to ruin my marriage, everything my wife and I had planned for, my newborn son’s future of growing up with his parents. The choice was easy to make but not easy to resist the temptation. That drive, that night and that moment in time were the culmination of months of the growth of a friendship transforming itself into love. We spent the weekend with our friends Joel and Yuta and had a fabulous time. Time went by and a few weeks later I moved to Rockford. That was the last time I saw Helena almost 20 years ago. I stay with my friend Joel in NYC almost every year when I run the NYC marathon so for the last 20 years Helena calls me to say bonjour at the same time. Sometimes 3 to 5 years have gone by that we wouldn’t talk. Helena moved to Lapland and married a fireman. She gave up the high fashion for the high country. She has two children and leaves a peaceful life in Lapland in a 10000 habitant town.
Last November I was in NYC and we talked we had a very long conversation, I finally told her, told her my BIG SECRET. My secret I held for almost 20 years. Has I am typing I am getting goose bumps. I said, ”Helena you know in New York I was really in love with you, I was so attracted to you but I couldn’t tell you it would not had been right”. She said, “OMG really, you really were?” We talked about that night of the drive in the thunderstorm, I asked her what she would have done if I tried to kiss her and her answer was that love was definitely in the hair that night but she didn’t know what she would have done. Helena and I are still best friends and now we communicate on Facebook very often, I may go visit her with my daughter this summer!
“And you’re the sole heir to her bagillions” ewww…who wants them. They are already dragging on the ground.
Your friend is trying to get an up close look at that Dumbo ear of yours.
bear – sigh. well, she IS looking on the correct side.
J – i AM hardcore. that’s why.
shirley – i love you. there’s nothing else to possibly say. i laughed so loud at that comment it wasn’t even funny. well, i mean, it was. that’s why i laughed. whatever, you know what i mean.
taylor- get outta town.
jill – your blogroll misses when i used to be sassy and sarcastic as opposed to introspective and deep. ah well.
You BIT your cat’s EAR?? That’s hardcore.
I have a lot of secrets. One of them includes the fact that when I was young, I thought that I could move things with my mind if I only concentrated hard enough…
It never worked. But I’m still trying.
I once stayed in a relationship an extra day just to get a free breakfast out of him. I was poor, I was hungry, I had no scruples. By the way, I’m still poor, I’m still hungry, and the line between scruples vs. non-scruple is pretty darn fuzzy. Love you, Brit.
Woah, I worked at Chucke Cheese too. But we only wrote names on balloons, not fair.
Fifi really had a major secret!! 🙂
Anyhoo…no secrets here. sorry. but…i enjoyed reading yours.
btw…for some reason my blogroll is showing a five month old post for your blog instead of this one! crazy!
btw…look at Jessica’s hands!! now that’s pretty freakin’ scary!
hey, where’s my first comment?
i meant Sarah Jessica 🙂
ok. i don’t know how you do it. you go away for a bit. then you come back, and it’s like no time has gone by at all – your posts pick up right where they left off: AWESOME FOLLOWED BY MORE AWESOME.
as for secrets, i find we keep secrets from ourselves more often than keep them from others. think about it: how often do we really tell ourselves the truth. do what’s in our hearts. or live without abandon. how often? hm. sounds like we keep a lot from ourselves, don’t we? secrets is only the tip of the iceberg.
deep, eh?
sandy- sigh. i’ve missed you. and i agree: yes, i’m awesome. and yes, i believe we lie to ourselves all the time. i know i do. we often try to convince ourselves that we are doing what we want, but its actually what we think is “best” or what others view as “normal.” speaking of the best – that’s you!
carissa – i mean, like, i can’t even get sunglasses to fit.
complainer – yea, i kinda had that too. mom wouldn’t tell dad stuff that she knew he’d get mad about. haha!
yellow- anyone who puts gum in my hair is fricken DEAD. do you know what a mess that would be.
hhahha such a great post. My ears are crooked too! And this is the second time I’ve written that tonight! Weird, just weird.
Great post topic. I grew up with a family who loved secrets. Everything was a damn secret. My mother and father still keep secrets from each other to this day. It used to and still does drive me crazy. LOL.
I let the dogs out.
I think she’s trying to put gum in your hair.
I don’t think I have any secrets. I have a big mouth and tend to tell on myself. Also, if I share your secrets you should feel honoured I care enough to remember what you said.
I’m claustrophobic and afraid of flan. These are not really deep dark secrets but I try to be careful what I post on the internet. The claustrophobia is self explanatory. Flan just freaks me out. Partly a texture thing, partly a consistency, it is funky custard. I’m not too fond of custard either.
I freaking lurv you. So much. Secret’s out!
My secret is that I use Secret (you know, that women’s deodorant.)
You just bought a movie ticket and your friend is trying to sneak in behind you without paying because she thinks your one ear is so big that nobody will notice her!
Weird. I just had a conversation with a friend about a secret we’ve kept for over 10 years about another friend whom neither one of us are friends with anymore. I swear this is real and not an episode of Gossip Girl. Anyway, the secret involved our ex-friend and her [now] husband. It’s a secret the three of us [me, my friend and our ex-friend] said we’d take to the grave and now, after reading this, I just want to blog about it.
That Chuck E Cheese one was hilarious!! HAHA
OMG I know exactly what you mean about the Pearl Harbor paper, I turned in a similarities-between-Hitler-and-Mao paper multiple times too, to teachers at the same school… I wonder if they knew… Hmmmm
I love the one about mispelling names so you could eat the cake. You and me both!
I dig the Twilight saga, SATC, and have reused papers in the past too! 🙂 Hope youre feeling better!
I stole our high school rival’s mascot’s foot. Right off the gym floor, at half-time. It’s still in my mom’s closet. They had to buy a whole new costume. I bet that cost a lot. For some reason, I don’t feel so bad.
Oh, and I like to drive naked.
Just kidding on that second one. But it would be kind of fun!
Miss reading your mah-velous art, Brit!
Oh wait. Here’s something weird. Don’t think it qualifies as a secret.
The only people (men) who are openly attracted to me are:
illegal immigrants
white, balding guys over 50
Now THERE’S a confidence booster!
“I wrote a paper in 6th grade about Pearl Harbor. By my second year of college, I had handed that paper in to about 8 different teachers along the way. What alarms me, is that I never even edited it.”
HI-LARIOUS.
Let’s move to North Korea together. Let me know.