Promise Not To Tell?

Mood: Feeling Special

Music: Do You Want to Know a Secret by Fairground Attraction

Secrets to me have always been very dangerous, tempting and sometimes life ruining little facts. Knowing a someones secret gives you such a strong and deep connection with that person; yet it is one of the most fragile and easiest connections to break. In my life I probably haven't acted the best with secrets. I was considered Rockingham Senior High Schools least trusted gossiper for a while (back in the hay day). I had never really thought about how important a secret was. It's someone having enough trust in you to tell you something that they can barely admit to themselves. It's something someone feels they need to share because they can't deal with themselves anymore. It's a very, very special thing. To me though, for a long time, having others secrets meant an excellent gossiping session with whoever I could get to listen (which was often a lot of people). This made me a lot of enemies and many broken trusts. I began to grow out of it; this didn't erase the fact that keeping others secrets did not seem important to me. 'Promise you won't tell?' meant nothing; the most easily broken promises were the ones regarding others secrets that they had trusted me with. For all those I hurt, I am deeply sorry.

I think a turning point for me was discovering the wonderful, healing and often hilarious website: PostSecret. Having just watched the music video for "Dirty Little Secret" by one of my favourite bands, All American Rejects, I was curious about the postcards held by randoms in the video that all contained a secret on them. After a short few minutes on Google I found PostSecret. Run by an amazing man called Frank Warren, PostSecret is a community 'art project', where people anonymously send in secrets on postcards. Books, exhibits and events where Frank speaks about PostSecret are all apart of this amazing project; my favourite aspect is the website, where Frank posts a page full of new secrets every Sunday. The secrets range from humorous to inspiring to silly to downright heartbreaking (I have often cried when reading them). As I read the website for the first time, I realised how important and special secrets are to people. PostSecret has so many fans telling others how amazing it was to be able to give there secrets to to others. It makes me feel lucky to be able to read those things that are so personal for those people. I knew after seeing the website, I would never tell another persons secret just for the sake of pathetic gossip.

I have been considering sending in my own secret these past few weeks; I am terrified though. What if people laugh at me? Or someone I know realises it's my secret. I guess that's the risk you take when divulging that deeply personal information to others; I hope everyone treats my secret as specially as I do now with other peoples.

You know this all just our little secret right? Promise you won't tell?

Beeje xx