hush, my darling

“I feel like I’ve told you everything. I’ve told you about exchange, New York, Europe. I don’t know if there is anything left to tell.”

“You should keep some of it a mystery.”

“Mystery,” I whispered, as if making a promise.

I used to have secrets. I carried them for years, until they threatened to crush me.

One day, I discovered it hurt less to have them ‘out there’. 

Each time I published something, or told a friend, it no longer belonged to me. 

A burden shared is a burden halved (or thereabouts), they say.

It freed me.

I started telling people things I would have once kept secret. (My secrets, not others’.)

For the past year or so, I’ve been mining memories most choose to forget for ‘material’, to prove I’m neither broken nor afraid, to explain, and take responsibility, for my actions.

Now, I fear I am writing the same thing(s), over and over.

Guilt. Sex. Mother-daughter relationships. (My ‘literary obsession’, A says.)

At what point does one reveal too much?

xo