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Women keep secrets all the time. It was my mom who taught me to keep my secrets. She believed we women were meant to swallow our pain, our questions, our discomfort for men, for anyone really. When I would ask her why she would answer, “That’s just the way things are.” She felt pride about how well she could keep her secrets of unhappiness. But the truth was, it was no secret. It was written all over her face, in her tone, in her living. The only ones oblivious are ourselves. I have secrets of how I lost my virginity. There was coaxing, manipulation, and the giving of Xanax to help keep me quiet. Most of my sexual relationships have been pills to swallow, both literally and metaphorically. Lies, abuse, and manipulation from boys led to the constant stream of pill-taking, to normalize all the things I had to keep secret. Friends would talk about their first times, and I would make up some story so as not to get asked, “Are you okay?” I had no idea if I was okay, which is what the pills and all the drinking were for. I didn’t want the question in the room, so I made up a normal story, a story anyone could believe. Shame comes with secrets, and eventually, shame eats us all whole. You start to feel disgusting that you have things to hide. Not because you did anything wrong, but because they happened and you regret them, hoping they would go away forever. –––– We were sitting in her living room, talking about her and Elijah. “He wants more sex, and I just don’t know how to give that to him. I’m not happy. My ex used sex against me remember? So I’m put off by it. Don’t tell anyone though.” I wonder why we are all so quiet about the pains men have caused us. Shaming us, turning our own sex into something we have to whisper about, something we are afraid to tell our best girlfriends about. “Just tell him, Paula, he’ll understand. Trust me.” She scoffed at me, “I can’t tell him! What man wants to hear about their girlfriend’s ex?” Elijah was a good guy though, smart, responsible, and understanding. “You can’t keep holding everything inside Paula. Sooner or later it comes out. Or worse, he’s going to stop asking you what’s wrong. And it will be too late then, when he stops caring, it will be too late and you’ll only have yourself to blame. Just open yourself up a little bit, let him show you that he won’t break your heart.” “But what if he does? What if he does break my heart?” she asked me. I sat there for a second bouncing my knee and staring at my fingers. “It’s better anyway. Better to let yourself feel love and break than to shut the world out.” “Is it though?” I didn’t know what to say to her anymore. I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know if I was right. If it was true what I said. Is pain worth love, or was it easier to shut everyone out and keep to yourself? I had loved a lot, left myself like an open book, and still I got crushed. It turned me bitter, now I was worse off than Paula. But I still believed in love. My last relationship broke me. I was soaring, flying high, untouchable, and then out of nowhere I got body slammed and everything fell out of me. Maybe it was the drugs getting to me too, not enough time sober to balance out all of the craziness. Or maybe it was just a build-up of everything and time was the only thing in between me and breaking. Maybe I wasn’t always as open as I thought I was. I kept the secret of uncertainty locked away inside of me. Why do we keep secrets? Even from ourselves? Are we afraid of the truth, what it will tell us, confirm? Are we afraid of the question? –––– Somewhere else there was a girl watching the show Cheaters in her cheating boyfriend’s bedroom. It was 3 A.M. and that was the only thing playing on TV. How fitting, she thought. She tried calling him again but it went straight to voicemail. Argh. She threw her phone done on the bed beside her, anxiety building up. She knew he was out with her. She walked on the cold tile to the kitchen to try to find some food. Nothing. She sat on the couch for a while, waiting for him to open the front door. She went back to his bedroom to watch Cheaters some more. “I think my husband is cheating on me.” someone on TV says. “What makes you think that?” the host says. “A woman knows.” is all she says. –––– Nikki is on a romantic getaway in New York, when she texts me, “He’s acting really weird. Idk what to do.” It’s midnight when I get the text. She sends a photo of them together. I study the photo and how he isn’t smiling. I study how she is smiling with her teeth but her eyes look strained, anxious maybe. I get a bad feeling in my stomach when I see the photo, and I end up texting back, “Cute!” When Nikki gets back in town we meet up at a coffee shop. I have already made up my mind about him, but she is hesitant. She rattles off a million red flags and inserts a bunch of “buts” in between. Excuses and reasons as to why he had those red flags. She couldn’t think straight or eat the eggs in front of her, she just kept drawing her fork around the cold scrambled eggs. “Why do you even like him?” I asked her. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. She closed it and then opened it again to say, “I don’t know. You’ve put me on the spot.” I take a sip of coffee. I was always ready to jump anyone’s throat for my friends, but for some reason they never really liked me doing that. Did they want me to just nod my head and go along with some sleazy guy who was using them? We sat in silence for a while, I watched the buzz of the coffee shop come in waves. I watched people stare at us as they walked past, as tears fell down Nikki’s face. I listened to the murmur of voices around us. I couldn’t quite catch what anyone was saying, but I wondered what type of conversations they were having. Were they having any as devastating as the one like ours? Later we were outside on her patio covering her roses with sheets, a freeze was coming and she didn’t want them to die. She was no longer crying, she was past the stage of crying. The sniffles were from the cold and our frozen hands. She was angry now. “You know what he asked me in New York?” “What?” I said while my teeth were chattering. “He asked me what my dream was. I think i’ve told you before but I havent really said it to anyone else. I said, to be a wife with a home. To have a great love. You know what he said his was? To have his fingerprints in the film industry.” I nodded my head. I knew her deep desire for love, which was why I was cautious of her in relationships. She is always quick to give her partners anything they want, at any cost. What else could I say? “Why are you putting yourself through this Nikki?” I finally said. She looked at me with red teary eyes, “Because I want a great love.” Some secrets get torn open, and what has been hidden for so long now lies bare. Everything in the name of love. Sometimes we reveal parts of ourselves to hide other parts, to get what we want. Call it compromise if you want, but it’s not that. I don’t know what it is. A desperate grab for love maybe, but really how could I blame anyone for what we do for love? I wanted to save her, protect her from the red flags, from the inevitable fall that would happen, but I could see she was already gone. She was no longer able to be reached, she was in love’s grasp now. –––– Somewhere else a woman is crouched outside smoking a cigarette. It's 2 A.M and her boyfriend has been talking for 30 minutes about how sorry he is for cheating…again. She believed him when he said it was over, but then she saw the texts, heard the phone calls, heard him say “I love you.” to her while he was supposed to be showering and she was in his bedroom watching T.V.. She inhaled, she exhaled. The cigarette tasted like being 18 years old at the club again, like cheap vodka, and slurry speech. It meant nothing, he said. But it meant everything to her, how could it mean nothing to him? She puts out her cigarette with the heel of her boot and gets up to walk back inside. What's in the name of love anyway? We all hurt each other and call it love. We all keep secrets and call it truth. We all walk bleary and teary- eyed towards love or if not we have hardened our hearts like stone and walk away from it forever. To be torn apart is to love. To be hurt is to love. To cry is to love. Some pain is unavoidable. Briana Soler is a writer and photographer based out of Houston, TX. You can find her on Instagram at @bribeatris or substack at brianasoler.substack.com Comments are closed.
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