When I was younger, not yet a teenager, I wrote a note to a guy in the neighborhood. I had a huge crush on him. No one was aware of this because he had a girlfriend who also lived in the neighborhood. Although I knew her, we were not close friends. She was above my “play grade.” She had an air about herself that said she was too mature to hang out with a girl like me who just wanted to dance and play in the streets. I understood why he wanted her as a girlfriend. Even still, I decided I needed to put my feelings for him on paper. Yes, this was my thought process at the very young age of eight or nine. So, I went for it. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I imagine it was something about what I thought of him, how I thought he was cute, how I loved his smile and so on. Shortly after finishing the letter, guilt settled in. I knew I could not actually deliver this letter. Besides being too shy to give it to him, he was someone else’s boyfriend. So, I ripped it into what seemed to be a hundred pieces and in my dramatic form, buried it deep in a hole down by the playground. I guess I thought this was the proper thing to do. I had to bury what I knew, even at a young age, was wrong.

 Also in true “me form”, I decided to tell my friends what I had done. It was such a juicy secret. But who cared. That’s what and who friends are-the holders of juicy secrets. But little did I know, the juice wasn’t to be held, it was to be had by all. My friends found my love letter grave, dug up the pieces, put them back together, read the contents and told the boy and his girlfriend. Wow! The holders of secrets couldn’t hold mine. I guess the juice was just too sweet. Not only was I afraid that I would be confronted, but I was hurt. It took a lot of work and diligence to get to that letter. Yet and still, they did. Why was exposing me so important? Why, after forty years, was I so annoyed -haunted even- by that incident? 

PAUSE. Check Yourself, Girl! Some acts are not necessarily about exposing your wrongs or your secrets. Although that may appear to be the intent, some things are much more targeted and meaningful than that. Instead of spending time (forty years) wondering why someone wronged you, the focus should have been on what it hastaught you, not about others but about yourself. If you’re going to bury a secret, then do just that. To bury something means to completely cover or cause to disappear. The physical act of burying something goes away when it lives above ground. Telling someone cancels that. 

 I thought I buried my secret and made right of my wrongs when I destroyed and made that letter vanish. What I am just now learning about that incident Is that it was always about me. Writing the letter was never about him. I needed to put those words on the paper for self-fulfillment. Had it not been about me, I would not have destroyed it. Even if no one else ever read it, the letter had served its purpose. Writing it was actually the end goal.

Forty years is too long to wait to settle things within yourself. All this time later, I realize that the incident was a “note to self.” We can’t get caught up in the details of the role someone else plays in our lessons. We will miss the real intentions behind them. The intended message was for me. It was my therapy. Although I may not have known the reason for impact this has had on my life, I am now most certain of the necessity of it.