Secrets and Lies

I always prided myself on being good at keeping secrets.  Two and a half years ago, someone told me that I was a box of them.  People would tell me things and those things would never leave.  I would just hang on to them until either the moment passed or something else happened that I felt required me to reveal the relevant information.  I was always independent enough to keep things quiet, to keep them safe.  That's why people trusted me.  They knew that if they told me something, nobody would hear of it again.  And telling the truth is a relief.  It displaces a burden off your back.  It makes things a little bit easier to deal with sometimes, which is why I've always tried to be someone that people can talk to.

I still try to be that person, but it's harder now.  I make no secret of my curiosity, which is occasionally intimidating, and I no longer go it alone.  I trust other people on occasion...fairly often lately, it seems.  The season finale of Grey's Anatomy ended with a line I could relate to particularly well.  Meredith Grey said,

There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone.  It wasn't because I thought I'd be happy alone.  It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it.  It's easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love, and then you don't have it?  What if you like it and lean on it?  What if you shape your life around it, and then it falls apart?  Can you even survive that kind of pain?  Losing love is like organ damage.  It's like dying.  The only difference is, death ends.  This?  It could go on forever...


That's the point I'm at.  It's not easy to be alone.  It never has been, it never will be, but at least I could always survive that way.  I was self-sufficient.  I was strong.  I was independent.  And to a point, I like to think that I still am.  But the problem with being in love is realizing that suddenly you have to learn to trust someone again, and after the difficulty of getting used to that, the agony of letting go of certain things and letting someone in...it's not really possible to go back to being alone.

When you tell someone every secret, not only your own, how do you suddenly keep quiet?  When someone specifically asks you not to, how do you avoid bringing it up when it's something you can't stop thinking about and don't know how to really wrap your mind around?  I'm bad at finding a balance and really good at managing extremes.  So I can either tell someone everything...or nothing.  I'm not good at hiding or sharing bits and pieces here or there.  And I'm working on it.  I can do it.  It's just difficult for me to reconcile.  That, however, is not the point.

I wish I could understand it better.  I'm not going to lie, but there are certain things I'm just not going to say.  I might push one way or the other here and there for one reason or another.  I just want to understand.  I want to help, in part because I've been in similar places, in part because I care for god knows what reason, because it makes sense to me, because I hate seeing certain people hurt.  The fact remains that I hope things will work out, I hope I don't break anything, I hope I can be of use.