This is a work of fiction.
image by Willgard from Pixabay, free for use under Pixabay’s content licence
There is something I have to tell you.
It’s a secret.
But I’ve forgotten what it is.
I knew a moment ago, or a lifetime ago, but now I can’t remember. It’s right here on the tip of my tongue. At the end of my fingertips, just out of reach. It’s hiding inside each of my bodily organs, invisible even on ultrasound. But you might be able to see it, sense it, if you look closely, catch my expression when I think no one is looking. Read between the lines. Know what I mean.
It’s a secret that will break your heart. Rock your world. Teach you the meaning of life, and of grace. Make you the life of the party. Reveal the ultimate truth of everything.
But it’s raw. Unvarnished. A pebble. Vulnerable to erosion, to propaganda, to censorship, to denial, to Truth and Reconciliation, to Social Forgetting. It has sharp edges, still. Be watchful or it will catch you unawares, cause you to lose hope, to lose heart, to lose everything you’ve collected and gathered around you like a cloak against the rain, against the pain. Cause you to lose your mind, to lose everything.
It’s what you’ve always been afraid of. That thing that you always worried, quietly, might happen, if you let down your guard, if you stopped paying attention, if you didn’t keep pushing it away. That thing that you thought, or hoped, was impossible, but now it’s happening, it’s here, it’s done, and now it’s indelible, un-erasable. You’re covered in it, now, and it will never come off.
It’s that worst case that you’ve always conjured up in your imagination when things are up in the air and you don’t quite know or don’t know at all, so that what actually turns out will seem mild and manageable by comparison. Hah! See? Worried for nothing!
Like that person from your past, the one who left that scar, the one you have never forgiven, the one you have almost but not quite forgotten, the one you thought you might have loved, or would have if you’d dared. All your rationalizations about what happened, what they did, just can’t clear the air, put it behind you, make it unimportant. What if that person came back into your life, now, unexpectedly? What would you do, then?
You know the secret I mean. It’s the one you could never quite admit to others, never quite admit even to yourself. How could you possibly have felt that, said that, done that, not done that?
That day on the beach, in the forest, in the bedroom, in the classroom, in the hotel room. Did that really happen? Could it have really happened? Might it have happened, or not happened, if you hadn’t been too (insert self-judgement here) to make it happen, or prevent it from happening? How could you have let that slip away? How could you have let that go unanswered? What is the matter with you?
It’s better now, though, right?
None of it is real, of course. It’s all just a collective make-believe. A conspiracy of self-delusion, nodding to the others, uncertainly, taking comfort from their uncertain reassurances. Yes, for sure. That’s what it is. That’s how it is. A complicity with everyone you know.
How do you know for sure? You can’t of course. Can’t know the future. Can’t know what’s really real, what’s really true. Can’t know who you really are, who anyone really is. Can you believe they did that? And you can’t know the secret I’m trying to tell you, can’t even hear it. It’s all just a best guess, anyway, for now, a placeholder belief.
The reason the secret is a terrible secret is that I can’t tell you. There are no words. There is no language. No one could possibly understand it, believe it, make sense of it. It’s impossibly simple. It’s unfathomable. It’s the key that doesn’t fit in any door. It’s a joke that has no lead-up, just a punch line, so it’s not funny at all, not even clever in that wry non sequitur kind of way that can make you frown and raise your eyebrows and smile in that peculiar way.
The reason that it’s a terrible secret is that it isn’t a secret at all. Everyone knows it, somewhere in the calcium of their bones.
We all pretend it isn’t so, as we’ve been taught to do.
But we all ‘know’ it is so, undeniably, in the way bodies know, babies know, wolves know, sparrows know.
The way we have forgotten.
