After a serious conversation with Rook, I have realised something terrible about myself.
I suck at secrets.
Not others’ secrets – those I keep well enough. Oh, not stupid things like how much she weighs, or how much he drank the other night. But when someone tells me something deeply personal to them, something I have no business telling others, I shut the hell up. I don’t go around broadcasting it like some kind of public service news station. Which is as it should be.
But my own secrets? Things I should seriously not go around publicising – I can’t seem to keep those under wraps. I tell people everything – the good and the bad, stuff that brings me up and puts me down, evil that’s inflicted on me, good things that have come as blessings, my lucky-me moments and my poor-me sob stories – I just let them loose on the unsuspecting public.
And for most part, I genuinely believed that I needed to do that. Talking about the crap in my life was a cathartic experience. Talking about the joys was just a way of me reassuring myself by saying “See? Good things happen to you once in a while. You’re NOT a total nitwit.”
But that’s not what people see. People see a self-serving egomaniac out on a self-publicity trip. Which is especially weird because those who’ve seen the soap opera my life can resemble, have no business resenting me for being happy once in a while.
That’s denying human nature, however. Are we ever truly happy when someone else finds joy? Sure, we say it out aloud, but do we actually ever feel happy when someone else wins the lottery? Is this yet another evolutionary joke, where the survival of the fittest is so ingrained in our psyches that we forget that we’re not animals fighting over the last scrap of mammoth?
There are days when I’m not so sure. I look around and it still seems like a battle – it’s just that the scrap of mammoth has evolved into something else. Now knowing what I know, the sensible plan of action would be to resolve to keep mum, to keep your sorrows close and your joys closer.
But what is my New Year’s resolution instead?
To write everyday.
Because, you know, it’s not like I ever write about myself or anything.