Secrets

Secret:  That which is hidden from others.

Most secrets are best kept unspoken, concealed carefully within the heart of their originator.  Unfortunately, many people cannot bear such a weight alone.  They feel the need to share the knowledge with a friend, a spouse, or a parent.  Unwillingly, perhaps, many of us are forced to receive this unwanted burden.   In so doing, our hearts become the burial urn which must carry and conceal forever, the ashes of someone else's broken dreams, deviant desires, or unforgiven sins. We are forced  to hold these ashes in the very same vessel that contains our own hopes and dreams, forever muddying that which is precious to us.   We carry the weight of  undeserved pain to our death if need be, sacrificing our own fragile peace of mind along the way.

I beg you.  Do not share your secrets with me. For they mar my spirit, tear at my soul, and often compromise my own dreams.  Once spoken, secrets become confessions and I am not a priest.  I do not have the faith of the clergy  to  lay your burdens at the feet of a higher power and so I must continue to bear them myself.   Each day I silently pray that the time does not come when my heart breaks and the ashes spill out scattering your secrets to the winds.