Vicki Abelson's 30 Day Writing Challenge #7 - Secrets - Day 6

Photo Credit © 2012 – Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw. All Rights Reserved

Day 6 of Vicki's WC7 - Secrets...

I've got a secret... see? Right here... *holding out cupped hands and lifting one thumb*

Technically, it's not "fucking for grades" if the professor isn't one of your current instructors, right?  I mean, at the time we were "wrinkling the Wamsuttas", the good (Good? Who are we kidding... she was fucking fantastic!) professor was no longer in a position to influence my grades.

Freshman year... spring term... my psych professor from first term had barely passed me... so it only made sense that, once I was no longer in her class, I should go after her like a greyhound after the rabbit, right?  Hey, this college thing was still new to me... how was I to know something like that was frowned upon?

Okay, okay... I knew... we both knew... exactly what we were doing and the morality of it. I can sit here and try to rationalize it, but I have a feeling you wouldn't let me get away with that.

So, no excuses... I make my confession... and another secret is out.

~*~

Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

12 September 2013

(Writing under a large mushroom, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest)

Vicki Abelson's 30 Day Writing Challenge #7 - Secrets - Day 2

Photo Credit © 2012 – Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw. All Rights Reserved

Day 2 of Vicki’s WC7 – Secrets…

There are three kinds of secrets… the ones that we tell only our closest friends… the ones that we tell no one… and the ones that we don’t even know we have.  The first two kinds of secrets are as tangible as an orange in one’s hand.  They have a shape and a weight to them… almost a physicality.  But the third kind of secret is the secret that we possess, but whose shape and weight is invisible to us… this is the secret that has not yet been revealed to us.

Pssst… come here… closer… closer… you want to know a secret?

I’m a lesbian.

I am a lesbian and I always have been one.  From the day I was born… no, not from the day I was born… from the very moment I first had consciousness.  Oh, I didn’t know that I was a lesbian… not for a long time.  That was a secret that I kept even from myself.  Not because I didn’t want to know it, but because I was not aware of it.  This was the third kind of secret… the one we don’t know ourselves that we possess. 

And it isn’t denial… it goes much deeper than that.  Denial must be preceded by awareness. 

Growing up I had secrets and I learned the secrets of others, but the secret that was my own, that no one else knew… I did not either.  I possessed it, but I did not know that I did so… not for a very long time.

What reveals a secret?  Usually it is the need to share.  Sometimes it is a need or a desire for revenge that makes us reveal a secret.  But what about the secret that we don’t know we have?  How is that revealed?

What triggers the revelation of the third kind of secret?  

For me, it wasn’t a ‘what’, but a ‘who’.

It was the summer of 2002… a few weeks before my seventeenth birthday and the beginning of college life.  I and several of my high school friends had gathered for one last get-together before we went our separate ways… to west coast, east coast, southern and northern universities.  Only this day, there was an invited ‘stranger’ among us… Kim’s cousin, Amanda.

And when Amanda offered her hand in greeting… and our fingers touched and our eyes met…

Time stood still… and the secret that I didn't know I had was revealed.

I am a lesbian.

~*~

Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

8 September 2013

(Writing under a large mushroom, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest)