The season of secrets is once again upon us.
The time when we tell children harmless little lies to increase their joy and sense of wonder. The time when we hide gifts from them and our significant others. The time when we paint on a smile and pretend that our families don’t drive us completely bat-shit crazy. The time we tell ourselves that all those cookies we baked are for everyone else and not secretly for us. The time when we think we really mean the words we say, that it was great to see you, that we should get together again soon.
Though by that standard, this time of year isn’t special. We all keep secrets year-round.
When I was younger, I didn’t talk much about my life. Pretty much I didn’t see the things that happened to me as secret, more as normal events that no one chose to talk about. It didn’t take me long in middle school to learn that I was mistaken. The few times I related a story about things that had happened to me or my sister, I was greeted with open-mouth astonishment that quickly turned to stunned silence. Silence that spawned avoidance which felt suspiciously like rejection, whether of me, my experiences or just a reality that didn’t fit someone else’s illusion, I wasn’t sure. But I took away a reading of the implicit social contract that home life was something I shouldn’t talk about. It made people uncomfortable which made them drift away.
Keeping my silence felt less lonely and vulnerable than actually being alone. Older now, I am beginning to re-appreciate the wisdom in that.
Well into adulthood, I kept to that personal rule: Don’t talk about family. Don’t talk about things that happened except with the few people I felt I could deeply trust. To this day, I still have friends I spent inordinate amounts of time with growing up who tell me they never knew anything was going on.
The problem is, those secrets never went away. They continued to cast doubt on what was and wasn’t normal. On whether I did or didn’t have self-worth. Sometime in my late twenties, I began to rethink what I’d learned.
I was thirty when my wife revealed her own family secret to me. As she struggled to cope with how to finally deal with what had happened, I realized I couldn’t very well advise and encourage her if I didn’t confront my own experiences. As she sought counseling, I made an effort to begin to share more of my experiences more openly. Not just with her, she already was pretty familiar with my background, but with people I knew when the opportunity seemed right.
Initially, unlearning that early lesson was hard. But slowly I discovered there is power in the truth, power in revealing secrets. While those secrets protected me, they protected others as well. Those people had more to lose than I did when the truth came out.
Over the next twenty years, I became more comfortable with telling people things that happened to me. By the time I was forty, I would openly tell people there was abuse in my family if it seemed pertinent to the conversation. By the time I was fifty, it no longer made me particularly emotional. It was just another story from my background I had to tell.
That’s not to say it wasn’t difficult along the way. Hearing the answers from the people involved as to why they thought they did what they did was emotionally painful. But over time, reviewing those answers provided a modicum of peace even if I didn’t like what those answers said. And that’s not to say I don’t still engage in arguments in my head with people not present. Or sometimes not living.
Recently, I began reconsidering the lesson from nearly forty years ago that I’d taken so much effort to unlearn. Anymore, I wonder if I’d initially gotten that lesson right. It turns out that adults even well into middle age aren’t really much better about how they respond to other people’s adversity.
Yet, I also know that if no one is willing to speak out, the perpetrators continue to get away with their crimes. They hide behind those secrets. They rely on the pain and shame their victims feel to shield them from what they’ve done. There’s a reason for the admonishment about not shooting the messenger. It’s the action we’re naturally inclined to take, because the messenger is an easy target who stands right in front of us.
There doesn’t seem to be a path of least suffering. Only one of right and wrong which requires personal sacrifice.
And maybe all the talking in the world won’t make you feel any less alone.
---
No good can come of what I am about to write.
Six years ago, I awoke in the middle of the night suffering from an existential crisis. That’s not a euphemism; it’s an accurate description of how I felt. My thoughts then strayed onto choices, mechanisms. I won’t share the details. Suffice it to say, after a couple hours reviewing options, I came up with something that seemed palatable.
As soon as I settled on that possibility, I got back to sleep.
Sleep, that’s all I really wanted anyway. Rest. Peace. A brief respite from pain and struggle.
When I was young, I never really thought about suicide but I often thought about going to sleep and never waking up. Let God claim me. I prayed for that more than once. That was back when I still believed.
Those were the type of thoughts that emerged again that night.
Now there are going to be several reactions to what I just wrote. Let me outline the most likely.
First, there is: Oh my god, I never knew. These are the people who will never get past the word “suicide” whether stated or implied. They will treat you like a Faberge egg for the rest of your life. Something fragile and easily broken, if not quite beautiful. Something to be pitied, not someone they can understand or relate to. An object, not a human being.
The next reaction is to run as far and as fast as they can. This one is more common than you think. I don’t really know him that well. I don’t need his drama, I have enough of my own. I’ll let his friends and family deal with it. I hope he gets it all straightened out. Maybe if he does, I’ll come back. Maybe, but probably not. The damage has been done. So de facto exclusion and exile.
Perhaps the next most common is cynicism. This is just a cry for attention. You weren’t really serious. You don’t even know how good your life is. I wish I had your privilege. What a waste. You’re not special. Everyone goes through it. Just get over it and get over yourself.
Then there’s the even more callous variant of: Someone should really call your bluff. You want to die, then do it. I dare you. I double-dog dare you. If you succeed, maybe then I’ll believe you. But either way, you’re a coward.
And finally, there is: You really need to talk to someone. Not me, of course. We’re not that close. I wouldn’t know what to say. A professional. Someone who is trained and gets paid to deal with stuff like this. Someone who knows the exact right thing to say. Someone who can make it magically go away, or prescribe the drugs that will. So, I don’t have to deal with it. Because I’m not sure I can. Or that I really want to.
These are the pretty standard reactions to anyone else’s existential crisis. Any revelation that makes us uncomfortable or upsets our worldview. This I know from observation and experience. I’ve called it out time after time. And yet, I am still surprised by how exactly right it turns out to be.
One of the first basic lessons I was taught growing up is that if you are upset, if you feel bad, you must have done something wrong. You, not anyone else.
Not only family reinforced this lesson, friends have, too, as well as the whole pop-psychology social media. It’s like a surficial reading of Buddhism by someone who never cracked the book or even the Cliff’s Notes. Life is suffering, snowflake. It’s all in your mind and how you deal with it. You. Not me. Not what I do. My actions bear no responsibility. That’s what led any number of nominally Buddhist cultures to think the Enlightened One would have been cool with torture. That’s what led to our current society to see Ayn Rand selfishness as a laudable trait.
Then why am I writing this? What do I want or think will happen? Now that’s the fundamental question.
First, let’s get something straight. I am not now and have not been suicidal.
My grandfather committed suicide. The Best Man from my wedding committed suicide. I’ve told the story that my mother slit her wrists in our driveway when I was very young, although I don’t remember it (but have seen the scars). A friend from high school later told me he made two or three attempts in college. Another friend from high school tried at least once, seriously enough to end up in a college infirmary two thousand miles away.
I’m familiar enough with the signs by now to have talked a near total stranger off that ledge for hours late one night, because I recognized their pain and knew it was the right thing to do. Which was evidenced the next morning when they told me that right after they stopped talking to me, they called a suicide prevention hotline.
I’ve never made a move in that direction. No overt act. I’m pretty sure I won’t, although I can never say never. None of us can.
But as I’ve talked about before, I have had someone actually try to kill me, up close and personal. I remember exactly how hard I fought to keep that from happening, using every bit of force and guile at my disposal. I know from experience that I have the will and stubbornness to keep going under adversity, both mental and physical. I’ve suffered enough shocks to feel fairly certain I can do it again, though I also know it takes me more time now to recover from the initial hit. Or hits.
What this little late-night episode told me was that something in my life needed to change and I didn’t know how to do it. I was profoundly unhappy. I felt trapped because I couldn’t see a clear or easy way out. Just like when I was a kid.
Now comes the hard part. Because what I write next will probably hurt any number of people. That is not my intent. My intent is to outline the truth of the situation as I see it. As I experienced it.
The cold, harsh reality is this: In the past several years, I’ve had to confront the dark side of human nature. I’ve witnessed some abhorrent behaviors, heard life-altering statements. Things like that rape doesn’t matter as long as the rapist is more fun to be around. Things like that I should never gotten involved, no matter who I was trying to protect, who I was trying to defend because it threatened someone’s cherished illusions. By implication and action, that this was somehow my fault for pursuing it, and not letting it go. No matter who was at risk.
At one point six years ago, I said very publicly that I had checked out. That all I was able to do for two solid weeks was lie in bed and watch movies. I was unable to think straight, unable to write, barely able to function. Exercising and daily showers were major accomplishments. Maybe two people checked on me, both a couple thousand miles away. No one local. No one stopped by to see if I was ok, or just to say, hey, I’m here if you need me. I heard that statement once or twice well afterward but saw no follow-up.
In fact, I watched any number of people put daylight between me and them when I needed them, when I had said I needed them, because they didn’t know what to do or say. So, they said and did nothing. People who I thought meant something to me. People I thought I could trust.
One brave soul apologized, saying they had done exactly that, months after the crisis had passed. While it showed a great deal of honesty and integrity, it also served as confirmation.
Most people aren’t as forthright.
---
Beyond the time of secrets, we enter a brief, ten-day twilight zone between the solstice and the New Year. It's a time we usually reserve to do a few things we enjoy as well as looking both back and forward to sort out where we've been and where we think we're going.
Six years ago, in that interstice, we visited with college friends we hadn't seen in nearly twenty years. In the process of catching up, I started thinking beyond the normal where have we worked and what we’ve seen on trips to what was really important. Looking back, I think there are really three things I am extremely proud of having done, none of which I talked about that night.
That's not to say I don't have achievements that I'm pleased with. Things like reviving two dying organizations when I was younger that meant a lot to me, and keeping a third on life support before finally pulling the plug. Or the design and debug I did in engineering, though I'm sure someone somewhere by now has found any number of issues with it, if it still exists. Or more in having a body of writing that includes a novel, fifty plus short stories, twenty plus poems and over a hundred essays.
The problem is, I can't point to any one thing among them that feels like something meaningful.
The first accomplishment I felt, oddly, was managing our finances. Meeting my goals, many earlier than expected, has meant both Karen and I have been able to pursue careers we really wanted and enjoyed. It also meant that when things stopped being fun for her at work, she could bow out when she wanted. It involved a lot of hard work, worry, long-term planning and sacrifice. But the security and stability has been worth it. It's one of the few things I feel successful at.
The second accomplishment was taking care of Karen when she was diagnosed with cancer. Being home to do what needed to be done felt and feels important. I know how lucky she was in needing as little care as she did. Yet it constantly amazes me that her situation was not and is not a given, how many spouses and SO's walk away or fall down when things get tough. I can only hope that my small effort made a difference in how she responded to treatment and in the speed of her recovery. The pieces I wrote to entertain her while she was going through it still feel like some of the most important things I've written, though not the best.
Finally, I am proud of going to bat for her and for others who didn't know, some of whom may never know, the darkness her brother wrought. Of trying to defend three little girls from a sexual predator without losing my marriage in the process, which ended up being a close-run thing. For twenty years, I stood alone. I fought as hard as I could as long as I could. While I know I could have said and done certain things differently, I don't regret a thing. Except maybe that I didn't fight harder and do what I thought needed to be done from the beginning. I just hope I did enough.
Not exactly the types of things you recount over Indian food while everyone else talks about their jobs, their kids, their houses and their vacations. An odd collection to say the least. But I think if I look back in another thirty or forty years and that's all I have, I'll be content.
I’ll have to be.
---
Two years later, I revisited that third accomplishment. For decades, I thought I’d wended my way through a very narrow path to success on that one, despite the cost. Then, without warning, part of that accomplishment was ripped away. I thought I was doing something for someone else, because they couldn’t and I could. Turns out, they never wanted it. None of it. Ever. More the pity that I even bothered.
I could have turned my back and moved on. I had been lied to from the onset, repeatedly, overtly and covertly. By the time I learned the truth, at least part of it, a vow had been extracted. Not the last as it turned out. I kept them as best I could, at least the ones I swore.
But in that moment, I burned a final bridge to the waterline and fully expected it to remain in ruins. In fact, I still see that river as my Severn. If anyone from that clan brings that conflict back to my side, they are fair game. Like an onion eater straying west of Offa’s Dyke. This time, I will not stop until I’ve done what I should have from the start. But for now, I’m content to just enforce the border. With fire if necessary.
Yes, I was angry. And deeply hurt. Twenty years of effort is a lot to have devalued.
As a result, my writing, suffered. I stopped writing essays about my life entirely for years because they seemed to have become a sort of entertainment for the audience. Something titillating or voyeuristic rather than a mechanism to relate to people, to speak a truth of one kind or another I knew from experience many people shared but were too afraid to express. That was just too painful.
In the isolation of the pandemic and a time of social uncertainty, I still struggle with that.
Even fiction became more difficult. It felt trivial. Each time I sat down to work on a story that had been in process for months, I just pushed it away. Most days, I was no longer sure who I was writing for. To entertain an audience who may not really care if I lived or died? That may not be true, but some days that’s exactly how it felt.
I don’t write for me or to perfect my craft. I write to share with others. Because I can and they seem to enjoy it. Or because it sometimes enlightens them in some way by putting something into words they can’t. Though I have developed some deep trust issues on that score now.
As I’ve said before, the only thing I write for myself is poetry. Unlike fiction which is meant to entertain and so has to connect with the reader, poetry for me is about expression and capturing something I see or feel. I share it as a curiosity, not because I think it’s particularly good. Maybe it will resonate with someone, or reveal some portion of me that will help others understand. That’s why for a few years I posted so much of it.
But my choice is either to self-censor, or to attempt to express a truth destined to be misunderstood. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. So, I often sit, bound up in knots, trying to sort out a way to see myself clear, or set it down forever.
Which is a third option in a way.
---
When that third accomplishment was taken away four years ago, I checked out again. This time instead of movies, I read ancient science fiction for two weeks straight. Same deal as earlier. Only this time, I didn’t bother to mention why. It didn’t matter the first time, and I was well aware people were tired of hearing about it. So, I held them at arm’s length for my survival.
I knew how to survive. I’d done it as a kid. Then, I’d learned through social convention that talking about things didn’t help. People just looked at you in shock and turned away. Responsible adults didn’t or wouldn’t intervene, despite my then having no power to change the situation for myself. No agency.
Since I was young, I’ve heard excuses like, maybe if you’d been a better kid, I would have done more to help you. Or, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Even recently, I’ve watched conversations with people close to me get actively shut down, diverted or minimized.
A great deal of my faith in people had been shattered. I’ve been trying to piece something, anything, back together ever since. Not some Humpty Dumpty Faberge egg. Something more akin to Kintsugi.
---
"We are all just three bad breaks away from seeing throwing scud missiles as a valid career path."
More importantly, we are all just three bad breaks away from being that person so much of our society loves to look down on. That person who struggles. That person caught in a downward spiral. That person who needs help.
Those bad breaks could come from your attention wandering for a split second too long in a parking lot with a pedestrian, your birth control failing under normal parameters in high school or college, or that lump that turned out to be something malignant rather than a sebaceous cyst. It could be identity theft. It could be getting laid off from your job. It could be the family or circumstances you were born into. It could be an addiction or mental illness. It could be the extended isolation or lingering illness from a pandemic that only half the country seems to take seriously. Stack any three of them together and you could be almost anyone.
Your life and circumstances can change in an instant, not always because of poor planning or poor choices but rather because sometimes random bad things happen to random decent people. If you've avoided them in this life, you are exceptional, in that you are lucky, not superior.
The day you forget that is the day you put your first foot into the grave. Because your sense of compassion and empathy has begun to die. And with it, your humanity.
And in a time of personal struggle, pandemic and insurrection, our shared humanity is all that stands between us and chaos, the container that holds in civilization while keeping anarchy at bay.
That vase is vital to our continued communal survival, no matter how we manage glue it back together, with platinum, gold, or silver. The flaws may be clearly visible, but the whole is stronger despite its imperfections.
And perhaps more beautiful for what it has overcome.
© 2021 Edward P. Morgan III
