When Protecting Ourselves Actually Doesn't

 Sometimes in life terrible things happen.  We turn the corner and there it is. Someone has died, someone is terminally ill, we learn something awful about someone we love and sometimes it's us.  As we come around that corner we realize that we can no longer get back to where we were.  We are now heading an entirely different direction.  We know that we should invite our advocates and supporters to accompany us but it's too embarrassing, too shameful.  We just can't.  So we close ourselves off, we huddle into our fetal position ball and protect our vital parts.  We stop associating with those who know or we take on the role of someone who doesn't care.  We wrap our heart in skin and bones and pray for it to harden, we go mute and we choose never to speak of the IT again.  We slowly, gradually, step forward in this new way of being; the being that has walled this one part of us off.  It is unaccessible to the world and slowly it becomes unrecognizable to even us, the perpetrator.  We find the words to avoid it and they roll off our tongue like a memorized verse; he's sick, she died, I don't remember.  The years fall over each other and eventually no one recalls it and the IT actually isn't spoken of again.  But, sadly it cannot be covered up or shrouded, buried or hidden.  It will always be in our deepest recesses and every so often it will show up in our darkest hours.  We cannot avoid who we are or what we have done.  We cannot protect ourselves by hiding away from the past.  It is all a part of who we are and who we become.  As we try harder and harder to avoid it, it begins to take on a life of its own.  The secret must become known.  It can no longer be hidden.  We peel away the corner of its shroud and absorb the light it gives off.  It does not destroy us and we set about to find the one person with whom we can share the secret.  And the world does not collapse in on itself.  In exchange, we find this tiny moment of peace from the toil of hiding the IT.  The next day comes and we inch the secret a little farther into the clearing.  And again the world does not end.  But we feel the freedom of releasing the wall of our inner being, brick by brick.  Day by day, we come to understand that life will go on and we can live more fully as we embrace the whole person that we are; the one that has made mistakes, the one that has covered her tracks, the one that is human.  We mesh that person with the one who loves deeply, the one who gives with a full heart, and the one who can finally learn to forgive herself.