secrets – My World With Words

February 7, 2023February 7, 2023

Secrets in the Forest

Today when talking to my Mom, she commented that she’d been thinking about her late husband, my stepdad, all day. It bothered her, because what she was remembering were the tens of thousands of dollars he embezzled from the company he and a good friend had founded. She also mentioned tens of thousands of dollars she’d had herself that went missing. It all added up to one thing: she didn’t really know the man.

We all have secrets we take to the grave, and some will be revealed once we’re gone, whether we try to hide them or not. Some are amusing. My former roommate told me about a woman we both knew from church who’d tragically died in a bungled bungee jump. This woman was athletic, with a short, kind of manly haircut. We all thought she was gay, and perhaps she was. But under her bed and deep in her closet her roommate found dozens of romance novels of the bodice-ripping genre.

Other secrets are heart-wrenching. A good friend of mine found clues her brother left for her before he died of cancer, revealing that he was gay. This was a man who was conservative in his faith and his politics, which may have been why he stayed in the closet. He came out to a few gay colleagues, who comforted my friend after her loss. The thing that got to me when was she said she wondered if he’d loved someone and couldn’t–or wouldn’t–do anything about it. That broke my heart.

I have my secrets, but I don’t think any of them are bombshells that would shock friends and family after I’m gone. At least I hope not. I don’t want anybody close to me saying they didn’t really know me, at least, not in a negative way.

I think of secrets as something we keep hidden in the forest of our lives. Some are delightful, some are devious. Only we know the path to many of them. I have no words of wisdom here, only to say, your secrets are safe with me.

Image Credit: © PostReality Media–stock.adobe.com

August 9, 2016March 24, 2017

Layers & Secrets, Part 3: You Will Always Be My Friend

Dear Friend,

I know you have a secret, and I’ve got an idea what it is. Whatever it may be, it doesn’t matter to me. You will always be my friend.

AdobeStock_108510898 [Converted] We’ve had ups and downs in our friendship, and I’ve taken the blame at times when I wasn’t at fault. I finally figured that out. But here’s the thing: I don’t blame you, either. Life is complicated, and the blame is widespread. You’re doing the best you can.

You’re a complex person. I like that.

When you want to talk, I’m here.

Your friend,

Belinda

July 12, 2016April 4, 2017

Layers and Secrets: A Message to My Friend, Part 2

Years ago a woman I knew casually was tragically killed in a senseless accident. Since her roommate was close friends with my roommate, I was in on a lot of details surrounding her death I would have preferred not to have known.

But one incident stood out in a humorous way. The woman who had died was a tough broad, whose style can best be described as “woodsman’s.” There was little femininity about her, in appearance or manner. Yet hidden underneath her bed her roommate found not one, not a dozen, but hundreds of Harlequin romances. She had her girly side, you could say.
Two Woman
Since then my former roommate and I always speculate what friends and relatives will find “under the bed” when a loved one dies. We all have our secrets; few in my circle would ever acknowledge reading romance novels of that genre, but who knows what they’re pulling out from under their pillow as they prepare to sleep?

Some of those secrets can be heartbreaking to learn. Discovering your loved one had a secret love could be painful, perhaps even beyond what it needs to be. Decades ago, a friend of my mom’s was killed in a plane accident. She was a flight attendant (well, stewardess, it was that long ago), and up until a short time before this flight, she’d been having an affair with the pilot, who was married. They’d called it off and agreed not to fly together again, personally or professionally.

However, she was on call to work that day, and had to work to fill in for a sick colleague. Everyone on the flight died in the crash. When I learned their story, I wondered, did the pilot’s wife know about the affair? Did she think her husband lied to her when he said it was over and he’d never fly with this young woman again? As far as anyone in the know was aware, the affair truly was a thing of the past. But that man’s wife may have lived out the rest of her years thinking otherwise.

Or she may never have known a thing about any of it.

As I write this I’m pondering what secrets I have that family and friends could learn after I die. Hopefully that’s ages away, but what if it happened sooner? I honestly can’t think of anything, yet I’m a private person, so there undoubtedly are things about me that would surprise others. Hopefully not dismay, but I make no promises.

I believe in keeping some secrets. It doesn’t need to be deceitful to go to your grave without revealing all sides of yourself to the world. Those who are left to learn the truth, however, need to be forgiving and kind, even to the departed.

(This is part 2 in a 3-part series on Layers and Secrets. Watch for part 3 in two weeks!)

Image Credit (Two Women) © Kriminskaya — Bigstock

June 11, 2015February 25, 2016

one man’s shame is another man’s glory

Ah, guilty pleasures. If you don’t have one, shame on you.

For me, it’s currently the TV show “Jane the Virgin.” I know, I know. That’s why it’s a guilty pleasure. To those of who you feel a need to start talking about PBS when I mention it, phooey. There’s a reason I like it. It’s fun. It’s good. It’s pure escapism.

There are a few songs I’ll blast when need be…well, actually, my apartment has thin walls and bitchy neighbors (including me on occasion), so I don’t really blast the music. It’s just played a wee bit louder than usual.

“Money for Nothing.” Hmmm…maybe not so much to feel guilty about there.

“Sugar Sugar.” A little closer. (Completely irrelevant to this piece, my friend Tom uses this as the ring tone for his wife.)

“It’s Raining Men.”

That’s what I’m talking about. I think that’s as bad as I get, but I’ll stop just in case.

Now there are other things I like that confuse some people as well, but I don’t think of them as guilty pleasures, anything I’m going to hide from the public. I have all seven seasons of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on DVD. When the cable guy came out (on time – what do you know!) he looked at them, looked at me, and said, “well, I used to watch cartoons.”

Again, phooey! Frankly, I don’t get the comparison.

Now some of you have guilty pleasures I don’t want to know about, and thank you for keeping that information to yourself. Others of you are just plain boring. Ice cream is not a guilty pleasure. You may feel guilty about eating it, but that’s not the same thing. There has to be something a little shameful, a little “what the what?” about it.

In some circles, “Jane the Virgin” isn’t going to be a guilty pleasure. In my friends’ elitist little world, it is, so I keep quiet. Yet those snoots have their favorite less-than-esoteric television shows I never give them grief about.

Oh, I’m not going to list them because one man’s shame is another man’s glory. (I just made that up.) Like Jane. The more I think about it, the less guilty I feel. It’s funny. It’s campy. It’s a telenovela.

Wait, I just watched last night’s re-run. It IS a guilty pleasure…but a really good one.