Everyone has secrets. Some are the simple kind, the little white lie that you told and never confessed to, the little half-truth you revealed instead of the whole truth. Others are more serious—some people call them deep and dark. I’ve always wondered why, but I guess it comes down to that these secrets are stashed away in the recesses of heart and mind—in a place that is both deep inside and deeply hidden, and very dark so that no light ever reaches them.

I don’t mean either kind of secret. I mean the soul-deep ones…the ones that you keep hidden from the people closet to you, that you keep so well hidden you yourself aren’t consciously aware of them most of the time. You don’t keep these to be malicious or save your own skin, or in some mastermind of a plan. You keep these simply to survive. They’re soul-deep because to reveal them, even to yourself, changes who you are—hurts, most often, too much to even comprehend—and secret because of the pain. These become rooted in your head, rooted in your being, but you can’t talk about it, can’t try to fix it, can’t do anything with it except know that it exists.

I have a secret like that.