Secret Gardens

Several of you have called/emailed me about the site.  Its been nice to see how many of you really enjoy the writing.  One of the biggest questions that follows is, "But what do your parents think?"

Yes, yes, I've always been a bit too honest for my own good.  In my days of teenage emotion and poor young twenties judgement, my best sounding board was my Mom.  We would be out to lunch and her face would twist to horror and shock as I relegated tales of boys, sorority, and the French Quarter.  It took her a few years to realize that I didn't really have an edit button to delineate the roles of parent/friend.  She smartened up though and finally would stop me at the beginning of the story with a simple question:  Do I really need to know this?

My life, for the most part, has been an open book with those I care about.  One main reason:  I can not lie well.  I fidget, I pause, my eyes wander up and over the person I'm talking with, and generally I can't keep my own story straight.  In short, I would be a terrible CIA operative. 

As I've matured I've learned that there are secrets that you must keep to yourself.  Every person should have his/her own secret garden.  The fact of the matter is some secret telling can just be for your own conscious vs. the best interest of the other person.  However, there can also be a freedom and wisdom in sharing information that you hold close to your heart.  Your experience just may free another.  This can be a tricky tightrope to walk.

I wrote in my "about me" segment that I have had a journal since I was 6.  I also had two people I trusted violate that secret space.  One ex actually waited for me to go to work, open my moving boxes, read the journals, and retape the package.  (He confronted me on the content when I got home which just landed him a solid KO from my reflexes.)  Turns out he wasn't even interested in the present recordings, but was after the secrets locked three years prior.  After this kind of violation one might ask why I continue to keep these logs.  There is freedom and release in watching the ink soak into the pages with your confessions and thought processes. 

Without fail, I have had every boyfriend ask to read them.  I have denied every single one of them.  I'm not really clear why I keep them if no one will read them besides myself.  It is a nice way to observe patterns for me and perhaps my children will be left a key to a safe deposit box in my will opening my secret garden to them.  I'd like to think that I would let my future husband (???) read them decades from now, but I'm not certain if information might hurt him.  I will never deliberately hurt someone I love.

Back to the issue of my parents.  I love them very much.  What I wrote is nothing they don't already know.  I gave my Mom the link with an emotional disclaimer.  We talked about it after.  Although the truth stings, it also moved our relationship forward and what we had was a very healing experience.  My Father claims he cannot surf the web.  He would find this site to be boring and again, its information he already knows.  As a whole, my family is the kind that tells the truth no matter how ugly it is.  (Those of you who have been fortunate enough to have sat at our dinner table knows this first hand.)

My family can be a breath of fresh air in the fact that we don't sugar coat things, we allow emotion, and no excuses are made.  I have more than once stomped off from dinner, we have called each other names, and it is perfectly acceptable to burst into tears.  My Maternal Grandmother is like this as well.  She doesn't bat an eye when we play the fortune cookie game "in bed" and will talk about other unsavory topics while swirling her martini.  (I love this about her.)  There is no such thing as a functional family.  We all have our brand of disfunction.  It is familiar.  (Note:  familiar stems from the same root as family, go figure.)

Families can be about an image or they can be a place where you feel safe to be yourself (both the good and bad parts).  They can drive you crazy, give you great material for blogs/journals, and ground you.