No More Secrets

So says Sneakers, so says I.  So says today supposedly.  Someone told me today is postsecret day.  But the truth is, I have no secrets to tell.  There is nothing to me that I would not admit to anyone and everyone.  I think that scares a lot of people or confuses them.  I know for certain that 85% of the world believes it to be a lie. 

There are no secrets to me.  There are things I do not readily say, things not so much denied a person, just not told unless asked.  They do not ask about what happened to me in High School, and I don’t tell them.  These things are dark and no one likes to hear that.  To tell you the truth, it’s very hard for me to remember the last time somebody really cared enough to get to know me the way I think it’s important to know someone.  I’ve been on many first dates now over the last couple of months, and they all go along the routes of likes, dislikes, food, music, film, literature, philosophies…etc etc etc.  I’ve talked with many people to alleviate the loneliness that I often feel….but I still feel alone.  I scratch whatever I said to whoever I told that I wasn’t lonely.  I am.  But it’s not something I whine over.  I know that I’ve made my mistakes, in fact some colossal ones over the years.  I did not cheat and I did not lie, but I did let a girl go who was very good to me.  I believe she’d still take me back if I asked her, but I remain unconvinced that I want to.  Because she will never truly understand me. 

She is kind and sweet and cute and nice.  She indulges me.  She nurtures the things I care about and absolutely adores my sense of humor and my wit.  But she offers no challenges.  She does not know the things I know even on the basest and simplest of levels.  And while I have often told myself that a simple, sweet, girl would be good enough, someone who would be a good mother…I know that I’m choosing something expedient and efficient and not something ideal.  Upon my most recent first date with a girl named Lily, she could not believe that I hoped to aim for universal truth and the hope to reach Humanity (with the capital H) because I would most likely fail.  And in doing so it’s quite possible that I would help no one.  She preferred to change small pieces of the world one by one.  She may never accomplish and will never accomplish what I would do if I was a success, but she would, when she passed on, have a much smaller chance of failure.  I cannot help it, I must aim for the absolute best in an attempt to achieve it….because I don’t believe we can inspire greatness by aiming for something we already know we can accomplish.  To you Faulkner, a toast.  To you Hemingway, To you Wolfe and Woolf, to you Byron and Keats, Whitman, Emerson, Dickens, Donne, Austen.  A toast.

And the same is true of love.  We can aim for the thing we want, or we can take the thing we need.  We can suffer a little longer and hurt a little more to find someone who makes violin string crescendoes at first kiss…or we can stop being alone.  The greatest love is the one we do not need, but still want.  I have always believed this and try very hard to practice it despite the fact that I’m a human born with an unshakeable desire to love and be loved in that way that I can only satiate in tiny doses by being more than kind to relative strangers and adoring everyone deeply.  But there is further depth I can reach, and just because I can love anyone and marry any one of my girlfriends or exes doesn’t mean I will.  There is one that I will.  And if, for some reason, all things fall apart.  Perhaps there will be another.  But the truth is, it is not just any one. 

I am a paradox and perhaps that’s why I find them beautiful.  I put myself down frequently, but I do not dislike myself.  I do not feel there is anything wrong with saying I have faults, making light of them, or even taking them very seriously.  I brag about myself plenty, but I do not think of myself as on so much higher an echelon than others.  Sometimes, I admit, I think far more highly of myself than others….but I think we all do (of course I think most other people do it out of blind ignorance and a lack of self analysis or faulty self analysis so the big question is am I just another schmuck like all the rest?).  It’s possible. 

The truth is that I’m complex.  I’m so much more than a single day, so much more than a single conversation, a single sit down dinner where I stare and chat.  I seem to be more than my entire lifetime so far, as no one has yet gotten to know me the way I wish to be known.  I have no secrets.  I am not ashamed to admit anything I’ve done.  I have done things that I regret and things that I’m not sure I should have done.  I have lied about small things not worth lying about, but I lied anyway to ease my predicament just enough so that I didn’t need to think about it any longer.  I have, however, never cheated on anyone.  Nor have I ever lied about a relationship.  Maybe I should have, maybe had I tried all those years before to find someone else before I broke up with Rachel I’d still be with her and things would have been different and we would not have had a year long silence which still has not fully healed but is getting there.  If I had sought out Lindsay to see how she felt before I broke up with Nancy, perhaps Nancy and I would still be all right.  It’s possible.  But I don’t think so.  I think once something has ended, it cannot be rebuilt without a great deal of effort and I know for certain that I was not man enough then to keep it alive.  I regret that deeply and sometimes, yes, still cry over it.  I don’t take things lightly.

Please God, don’t let them give up on me.  These women with their fascinating eyes and smiles, with their soft words and the light inside them…the light of hope and possibility.  It is easy to say that the ones who turn you away were never the ones to begin with, but that’s just another convenience.  The world is full of them and I will have no truck with them.  None.  I can’t make Kate, Dana, or Stephanie forgive me, I can’t because I don’t think I did anything wrong, no, I know I didn’t.  And I can’t take back words I said in anger, frustration, no matter how little or much I believed them or how right.  On some level, I failed them.  If they want nothing more to do with me, then that is their choice and I hold no ill will towards them no matter how hurt and shocked I am by it.  There is a part of me that will always remain the cynic to the rest of me which I shall call the martyr apparent.  I’m no martyr.  I do what I think is right and I make no apologies for it.  Please God, don’t let the Past or the Future give up on me.  Let them give me the chances to show them how great I can be, how great I already am.  I know love deeper than most do, I know commitment, I know so much….and I keep learning….and one day, the greatest thing I’ll learn is to be able to say something that can equate to the depth, breadth, and power with which I feel….so that those who do

n’t want to will still believe me.

I write this hoping that some will read and understand, if not everything, at least part.  Perhaps just enough.  I do not write this for pity and I dont’ write this to be applauded or to have the world at large read this and respect me.  If you wish to leave a note telling me I’m arrogant or a martyr, your opinion is welcome and I will read it and consider it as best I can.  The nature of most of these notes is to attack and I dont’ generally respond well to them, as most people don’t.  I will say, if you think for one moment that you can criticize me, then by all means do.  But if ever there was a way to lay out all one’s accomplishments and regrets, and to see how often the former get celebrated and the latter are mourned, you will find me severely lacking in fanfare and possessing copious amounts of eulogies and tears.  It is my luck, it is all our luck, that we are pretty certain of what we handled well enough to applaud….it is our curse that we’re never really sure what we handled poorly.

Do me a favor this night or the next after you read this.  Don’t tell a secret to me, unless you wish to.  But in the night, in the dark…lay in your bed alone and tell the world at large the answer to a question you’ve longed for someone to ask.  Or tell it to me.  You don’t have to tell me the question, what the question would be, you can veil your answer as much as you like.  Do this.  Then tell me if it wasn’t possibly one of the most intimate moments you’ve ever had.  Perhaps I’m just as alone on that one, too.

Good night.