SECRETS

Secrets are for kids. If only that were true. Adults are bigger than kids, and sadly, so can the secrets be.

‘Secret’ sounds quite innocent, almost fun, something a little naughty but in a good way. Then there’s the kind of secret that really should be called another name, deception. Those types of secrets are an ugly cloud of deceit, dishonesty and disrespect. They are the kinds of secrets that grow and escalate, hurt people, hurt families and destroy lives.

Feeling the depth of despair after uncovering a secret of magnitude is unbearable. Life becomes pin prick tiny, simple, black and white. Your capacity to focus narrows, your world slows down to almost a standstill while the rest of the world continues at pace. It’s disorientating and alienating. Lonely. It casts black shadows on all of your life, outlines fade. Trust. Broken.

Once trust is broken that’s it. What’s left after that? Nothing. Yeah sure there’s the memories and perhaps lost dreams, but even they’re tainted, tainted with the darkness that secrets and deceit leave in their wake. I struggle to see how things can align again. Personally I would always second guess, it would lead to vulnerability and insecurity. Vulnerability can be endearing but insecurity certainly is not.

For the person holding the secret, they may build up resentment to justify actions, become critical, irritable and aggressive. That was certainly my experience being on the receiving end. Once revealed, there was denial and than attempts to rationalise the lies. The cover-up was worse than the violations, just.

So, secrets. Don’t. Just don’t.

HIRAETH

I was unaware that there was a word to describe this, but there is, Hiraeth It’s the feeling of homesickness and nostalgia that overwhelms me at times. The feeling pulls deeply, leaves me sad, seems to tug at memories and reveals small snapshots that can’t be made sense of. It’s confusing. It’s a feeling of displacement, not belonging, a yearning for another place.

It’s also believed that it could be a longing to be where your spirit lives. That place might not be a physical location, but nostalgic, not a place but a time, a memory. Or maybe it’s an imaginary place, a place visited in dreams and daydreams.

Whatever it is, it’s worth sitting with and trying to understand, there has to be some rationale for a pining heart. I believe it’s a longing of the soul, whether for an imaginary or real place or time, I don’t know but I do think it’s a lost soul because it’s such a deep pull.

Lost souls are restless, searching, hoping. Mine is one of them. So it’s no surprise that I experience intense feelings of nostalgia and longing. I’ve come to understand mine as a sense of being an observer, sitting alongside or above situations, looking on or down, uninvolved, detached. Sometimes it feels like slow motion, a lot of the time things seem so irrelevant and trivial.

Often I daydream, take myself elsewhere, fade away from a scene, get lost in imagination, think about things that embrace me. Perhaps that’s part of a creative mind, my mind is very busy, it doesn’t switch off, it inquires, searches, questions pose more questions and my mind searches through images for answers.

So there it is, Hiraeth, a strange sounding word to describe my feelings of homesickness and nostalgia.