The Secrets that Seperate Us

So I'm totally hooked on post secret. It's a blogish thing where people make postcards and mail them annonymously to this guy and he shares them. There are books too. This morning on the way to CGM I was thinking about some secrets that were kept in my mom's family. I am so careful to almost never think about them because they almost shatter me again and again whenever I think of the secrets, and even the people involved with keeping them. Then I get to work and I see this post secret.

Last night I watched this cheese movie on ABC called, "For One More Day" It's based off of a book by Frank Albom's, the same guy that wrote Tuesdays With Morrie. Now, I'm not a huge fan of his, for reasons that are really unimportant. But I have no cable and Family Guy was a repeat, so I watched. Towards the end of the movie the main character was talking to his daughter, in what might be the worst use of foreshadowing EVER, and they are talking about family secrets. She asked him why his mom kept *example* a secret for so many years. He replied something along the lines of, "why does anyone keep secrets? Is the reason ever good enough?"

Granted, I'm not talking about presants, or things like that. I'm talking about secrets that are hurtful. I'm torn, I mean I honestly vaccillate between which is better.
Would it have been better had I never found out about the deception that my mom's dad was capable of? Would it have been better had I continue to falsly paint him in my mind as the martyr to my mom's mom and sister? Would I have been any less knocked completely out of orbit had I found out that his proclamations of "you're only as good as your word, you must have integrity in your life, you must always tell the truth no matter how hard" were totally and completely false? Would my heart have broken less had I found out when I was younger, angrier, and less willing, or completely unwilling, to forgive?

I just don't know.

I know that I thought he was so funny, a bigger then life person that I never thought could let me down. So when I found out about his deception, his utter lack of integrity in 95% of his life, is it surprising that I went ahead and pushed the last 5% over there and figured they were lies too? Harder still is that it seemed like people just didn't notice. People still talk about mom's sister and mom and the things they did that were wrong, but no one mentions that none of the deception and fraud would have been possible without him moving forward. He had to have been the driving force behind it because otherwise the fraud would have fizzled. But no one talks about it.

So which is better? It may as well have stayed a secret for all the good knowing about it is doing. No one else seems as let down as I am by the whole situation, and that just makes me feel crazy, like my whole perspective on the situation is wrong somehow.

For the life of me I can't figure out why there had to be so many secrets, and why I had to be the invisible one that overheard them conspiring on the sun porch. I wish I never heard anything they ever said.

Secrets make me feel stupid. Like I'm not in on some big joke. Like I'm the only one that's left out.

I loathe when people blame things on their childhood, when they are plenty old enough to screw themselves up and stop blaming it on their family.

I try so hard to not think about it, because then it makes me want to blame them for my complete terror of all things commitment related, for the ease in which I can confide these things online, but I can't speak them out loud to someone in person or on the phone.

But I'm 28, I alone am responsible for the decisions I make. For the choice of my fear. For the choice of my solitude. Because even though I don't choose to be alone per say, I choose to not be with someone...which is a choice right?

I'm rambling.

In the end, I don't think that it would have hurt any less had I found out earlier that the whole of my mom's dad's persona was a lie, that the whole of his integrity and ethics was pure hogwash. Oh, what he said was right. He talked a good talk. But he didn't live it, and while he used to be an example of humor, compassion and honestly that I looked up to and wanted to be like. Now, he's just as usefull for the opposite reason.

He and my mom's mom and sister and the beacons at the other end of the spectrum. I try to stay as far away from acting anything like them as possible, and I'm doing alright so far.

Ben said once, that where there are secrets, sin is crouching at the door.

I liked that. It seemed to verbalize a groaning in me that I had not to that point been able to speak out loud. That one line alone would have made the series he preached worth it, but the rest was incredibly life changing for me. (pimp alert......http://www.4cornerschurch.com/messages/archives/?next=10 (get your sexyback))

I have no idea how to end this, but I have to get to making the Benjamin spreadsheet.....