My Life is a Secret, Even to Me

Have you ever wondered what you would say if someone asked what your biggest secret was? Would it be your weight, your real hair color, or that your diamond ring is fake? Would it be something like lying to your parents about what you did during Spring Break 1989? Or would it be the stuff of dropped jaws like once being homeless or giving up your own child?

I was sitting here on my couch the other night, trying to watch whatever was on television, when I asked myself, "What's my biggest secret?" I could not think of one. That's not to say I could not think of any: I truly could not settle on which secret I've held was the biggest.

I've always been a secretive person, not telling the complete truth about my life. I can remember when I was four years old and hiding my favorite little doll in a shiny pink purse between my mattress and the wall. My secret? I had cut all my doll's beautiful blond curls off to 1/4th of an inch all over her head. Whenever I was alone, I would take out my doll, grab my Kindergarten scissors, and cut away curl after curl, feeling a thrill in my stomach with every snip. When my mother unexpectedly showed up in my bedroom one day with an armload of freshly washed clothes, I nonchalantly slipped the purse down further towards my box spring. The real problem with my ruse was, of course, that 4 year olds cannot act nonchalant: I was instantly discovered and punished.

As I got older, my secrets grew bigger and more complex. At one time, my secret was that I got married and didn't tell anyone. I was dating one man whom I found to be insufferably boring and safe, but I just couldn't bring myself to break up with him. We had been dating about a year and a half when I met someone else--someone younger, more unpredictable, broke, and wildly romantic. I couldn't dump Mr. Safe--I felt paralyzed. I have no idea what I was thinking, but one day I married Mr. Unpredictable and didn't tell anyone, not even Mr. Safe. Not even my parents. Not even my friends. I wrote Mr. Safe a letter, even though he lived three towns away, saying it was over. Four months later, I told my family I eloped.

I've had the secret career, if you can call it that. I told anyone who asked that I was doing telemarketing. What I was really doing was a 976 "phone entertainment" job, fielding calls as Tammy, the red-headed, big-chested girl next door. Yeah, right. I took calls while hiding in a closet in my in-laws apartment so no one would hear me. Actually my biggest secret during that position was the phone call I received from an irate mother who wondered why there was a $99 call on her bill. After she realized what the phone number was all about and explained that her underage son probably played hooky from school and called the service, I suddenly remembered that she had called me and I was still getting paid for this call. Did I feel bad? Sure, slightly. Did I tell her my secret and cut the call short? Not exactly.

Why the need to be secretive? I don't know. Some people hold onto secrets just to tell them later, releasing them like balloons into the sky. They use secrets like currency to be traded. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours!" Maybe my biggest secret is that I'm untrusting and scared to let people know the real me. Maybe I've used secrets to my advantage and to avoid punishment. Or maybe the big secret about me is that without all my secrets, deep down, I'm ordinary--and being ordinary is like being invisible. Predictable. Transparent. Maybe I'm afraid that, as George Bernard Shaw said, "There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses." I will let people think what they want to think, and keep my big secrets to myself.