Day 6

Today is about the word "secret". Secrets have been defining my life for a long time. Until I say NO to keeping a secret, then that word and the act of keeping a secret will continue to define my life. Knowing all that should make it easy to say NO and tell someone else of the situation/act/etc but it is extremely hard for me. All the secrets aren't bad but they do place me in sticky situations most of the time. Like knowing that one owner of a company is unhappy with the other or that the other owner is doing things behind one's back. Or knowing that the work I am doing is illegal, immoral or unethical at times. Or not talking about the abuse I suffered because it hurts everyone else too much.

One of the books that I am currently reading (very slowly because it is hard work) is called Living the Truth by Keith Ablow, MD. In the first chapter, it talks about the truth. "As we mature, small lies we tell ourselves about the past build into an impenetrable web of denial and fantasy that conceals our pain. This web has to be unraveled if we are ever to find our way back to the people we were meant to be. We all tell ourselves lies; we all have buried truths. Most of us fear revealing them, even to ourselves. So we leave them buried and do whatever it takes to keep them there, sometimes forever. Our lives become more and more inauthentic." (Ablow, pg 15)
--I like these two paragraphs because this is exactly what a secret is and does. Whether it is fear of knowing the truth, fear of telling a secret or fear of ourselves, we all keep secrets and hide the truth.

Well, my secret (and the truth) is that I have been sexually abused. I have been verbally abused. I have watched a man try to kill my mother at least 10 times. I have lived without food, electricity/gas and a home at times. And I have hidden all this from myself for so long that if I just don't think about, then maybe it didn't really happen. Maybe my life is just a bad dream. Maybe one day I will wake up and everything that I have experienced will be a figment of my imagination. Maybe I won't be moody, or unfriendly. Maybe I will trust people again and maybe I will find love and happiness. Unfortunately, it is not a bad dream and it IS MY LIFE. What do I do? How can I get thru this? How can I make the pain and anger and hurt go away? How can I get others to realize that the real me isn't there and that I long to come out? But how? In therapy, we talk about speaking the truth, don't hide secrets, find feelings and cry through the pain. Right now I am crying but for what. For the child I wasn't? For the adult that I can't be? All I know is that my heart feels like it is breaking in two.