In ‘1984’, one of the most seminal works of fiction, George Orwell wrote that, “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.”
We all have our secrets, there is nothing wrong with keeping some things known only to you. Maybe what you don’t tell someone is worse than letting them know, choosing which decision to make can be troublesome though. Is sharing a secret a cathartic thing? If it only makes one of the people involved feel better, it would be selfish if you did it just to placate the feelings that you’re experiencing without considering how it might affect someone else. Pretty dick move, but it’s okay to look after what you want from time to time, isn’t it?
Would you take a second chance on yourself if it meant letting some secrets go? You just don’t let opportunities pass you by, at least not more than once. Giving yourself away, opening up, can be scary. You want to let people into your world now and again though. It’s fine to be private with your emotions, but then perhaps you realise some things about yourself that you’ve dodged thinking about for a long time. Saying no to what could have been the perfect job. Saying yes to the wrong person, saying no to the right person, regret is the worst. Can you change that around?
It’s hard to know what to do sometimes. Life is made of choices and not all of them matter that much, but then a different kind of moment comes along. One where things are changed forever, a few seconds or minutes that we might have thought about continuously. If you thought it was a good idea, you’d have made it already, wouldn’t you? You can always make wrong decisions, maybe you messed up the first time around. Will there be another chance? How about if you didn’t even know that a certain someone was a possibility, far less a probability? Self doubt can do one, decisions decisions, but a leap of faith isn’t the worst thing ever, someone always needs to reach out first.
Current relationship status? Staring at the dark.
Have you ever had a beer with a family member over Zoom? It’s ironically important right now not to become isolated and to keep in touch with family and friends in any way that you can. Catching up with one of my little brothers is always a cool thing, slipping back into conversation without months of being in touch is seamless. We talk shit about a lot of things, what we’ve been up to, sports, girls, memories about growing up. The drinks flow, and although we live hundreds of miles apart, soon to be thousands, reminiscing is amazing. There are a lot of mutual friends and each of us have caught up with a lot of them at some point. I tell him about a girl we both know that has a bit of a thing for him and he’s intrigued because he was blissfully unaware. Given that he’s newly single, he’s keen as mustard, it’ll work out or it won’t. Either way, always good to tip someone off if you know something that they don’t if it might work in their favour. A secret worth sharing.
He then returns the favour and tells me about a girl that asks about me all the time. Neither of us have seen her for a while, they speak regularly though, and she’s the kind of girl that all the boys who were ever in her company probably dreamed about. The asking didn’t just go one way but we never asked the same person about each other. She was everything that was important once upon a time but she never knew any of it, so it’s easy to know where the fault lies.
Sometimes the more you care about or like someone, the less you realise how little you’re letting someone in, you’re deceiving yourself rather than facing up to something that could be great. You can keep your feelings hidden for someone for an eternity and you learn to live with them. Some of the vowels and consonants that we shared weren’t lies but they weren’t full truths either, time to think some more about the one big thing that wasn’t talked about when it should have been. A secret that up until now was indescribable, words that were too difficult to articulate at the time. Speak up or keep quiet, you might as well take a chance. Fuck it, an email is composed, one secret won’t stay that way for much longer. On some level, it’s probably not even fair to ask the question, but wouldn’t you always want to know the answer rather than not? If you need to tell someone something, to share a secret, what are you waiting for?
How come it takes some people so damn long?
You, Me, Music & Life 