The Darkest Things

A close friend of mine, about a year ago, asked me a question.  He wanted to know the basest and most heinous and most creepy things about me.

He wasn’t prepared for the answer…

I’m all for honesty, but sometimes you hold things close to you, not because you are waiting for a moment to pounce or waiting for that time to let it all fly… no, most folks have skeletons and icky things stored away in various nooks and crannies because revealing them would scare most folk.  And the problem with scaring folk is that they tend to run away.  And you know what… I need folk.  I need them to heal and for them to heal.

Nope, those things, while not particularly dangerous, are definitely scary.

You know, getting all those things out there actually helped me in a big way.  They were things I already knew about myself and things that would be best left not documented, but allowing them out of their cage for just a little while made my burden just a little lighter.

You see, I’m scared of those things too.  And letting them out allowed me to know them better.  Letting them roam around and sniff and growl at people around me let me see how scary they can be to others and how much potential for damage those things contain.  So, now I can appreciate why they are so scary and unproductive.  You and I can see eye to eye there, friend.  But what you don’t realize is that while putting them away again made you feel better… the exercise of letting them out did some damage.  You didn’t really know those things about me, did you?  At the same time it scared me to no end to revisit those things about myself that I would prefer to suppress and forget.  There is a reason they are caged and locked away.

I am not them, but they are a part of me.  They are ugly, but I am not.  Putting them back gave me hope to know that in a “Safe” environment, to take those things out, turn them over and examine them, live them out again, my darkest moments, and then to be able to put them back again out of fear and lack of desire.  That makes me feel safer and actually happier to know that I am truly done with those things, but I know they scare you.

So, friend… don’t ask if you can’t handle knowing the darkest things about me.  But don’t worry.  I won’t let them bite.

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