The secrets we keep

                Secrets are a universal constant that bind humanity together. Everyone has secrets, and many of the feelings associated with secrets are a shared experience. We all know how it feels to keep a secret from others, for others, and even from ourselves.

                I have a secret. I have many secrets if I’m honest with myself, which I rarely am (who wants to be that depressed?). I have things that I keep so buried within my subconscious that I don’t even know if they’re real or not anymore. That’s the problem with secrets. If they stay hidden for too long they become myths.

                I have a variety of those kinds of secrets. From the mundane: friends confessing crushes and being sworn into secrecy; to the major: standing over the collapsed form, fearing for my own existence, and being told that what I saw wasn’t real. Over a lifetime, one collects many secrets. Now, here at my end, I will share some of those secrets that have kept me awake at night.

                I was twelve, she was fourteen, and I was madly in love. I confessed this to my closest friend, who, upon hearing this, confessed his own unending love for the same girl. For the sake of our friendship, we both agreed to never tell a soul.

                He broke that pact a week later, but then she moved and he was heartbroken, while I had already moved onto my next love.

                I was fifteen, he was sixteen. To be a complete cliché, he was also the captain of the football team. He was my first kiss, among other things (some secrets I keep still), and after our short but passionate fling, he swore me into secrecy so his girlfriend and the team wouldn’t find out.

                He’s married now. It was a beautiful wedding. He and his husband are very happy together.

                I was eighteen and just entering college, she was thirty-six and married. I worked at a restaurant she and her husband frequented. On weekends, when he was away, we would meet. This wasn’t at all what you are thinking. There was nothing sexual. We would just go on hikes, and play sports. We would go and have fun together, something her and her husband no longer did. She didn’t want anyone to know because of what the rumours could become.

                She and her husband divorced some years later. She is much happier now.

                I was nineteen; he was twenty-seven and a literature professor. There were nights where we would meet, having told everyone that we were going to the library, and then we would fuck. There was no romance, no emotion for me. It was just sex. At the end it was almost mechanical to me, but not to him. I swore him into secrecy so no one would think I was doing this for marks.

                I still got Christmas cards from him, until the year he passed. I think he had fallen in love with me.

                I was twenty-two and just about to graduate. I had a rival student who was up against me for title of valedictorian. Through a series of lies and other falsehoods, I was able to convince the Dean that this other student had been cheating on exams. They were expelled, and I was named valedictorian.

                Out of all my sins, this is the thing I regret the most. In my heart I knew they would get expelled, yet I did it anyways. They worked menial jobs until the day they took their own life.

                I was twenty-five, just starting to get a name in the firm I was working for. I got my name through sleeping with the more senior members, and betraying the more junior ones. A colleague of mine once came to me and confessed that he had fixed several of the accounts to cover up a mistake he had made. I assured him that I would take care of it. He was fired the next day. Through sex and blackmailing, I made it up the ladder fairly quickly.

                I don’t necessarily regret this. If I had lived differently, I would not have been able to do all that I have done. I do regret getting some of those people fired.

                I was thirty-eight, he was thirty-two, and the dead girl on the floor was twenty-one. This is when my secrets get darker. We had engaged in a polyamorous relations. We were happy. And then the girl started to have track marks on the inside of her elbows. She always claimed they were bug bites, but her eyes and hair told us the truth of the matter. One night she overdosed. She was no one, not really. Just some struggling actress who had fallen for the dignified and upper class gay couple who had frequented her shows. She had no family, no friends outside of us. So we covered it up. We burned her body and buried her ashes in a park she liked. We had everything to lose. If anyone had found out, our reputations would’ve been ruined. The stress of the lie was too much for us, and we broke up soon after.

                I am ashamed of the person I was. Of the person I am. This girl deserved better than that. And yet we tossed her away to protect our own dignity.

                I was forty-five, a founding member of a new and prestigious firm. We had been out drinking, celebrating the landing of an important and wealthy client. The girl was drunk, I don’t even know her age, but she was maybe twenty-two. I knew our new client, a forty year old woman, liked girls her age, so I sent the client over. They left together. The client kept this girl, basically in a cage, for three years. I never knew for certain this was true, but in my heart I knew it was. Eventually the client was arrested for something else, and I was questioned about the remains that had been found in the backyard. I denied any knowledge.

                As of now, you’re thinking that I am the direct cause for two girls death, and you are not wrong. This knowledge kept me awake at night and led me to the bottles I now love so much.

                I was fifty. There was some grey in my hair, and I believed that it lent me a certain air of dignity. I was an alcoholic, a functional one, but an alcoholic nonetheless. In a drunken state while walking home, I saw a man dragging a woman behind him. He was swearing and swinging at her with his free hand, and I could see blood on her face. I roared. All the guilt I had flooded me and turned into rage. I rushed the man, and in his confusion I was able to solid contact with his jaw. His grip slipped, and I yelled at the woman to leave. I beat the man with my bare hands. I remember his nose breaking under my fist. I remember feeling jaw bend and then break as I rain down blows. And lastly, I remember smashing his head into the concrete; again and again. I stood, drenched in this man’s blood, and bellowed into the night sky.

                I never told anyone this. I am oddly proud of my actions, yet I know how some would react to this story. I know I would be labelled murderer.

                I was fifty-three. I had taken to wandering the streets late at night. In my head I was protecting helpless people. In reality I was trying to atone for my guilt. I was in a stable relationship with your father. My firm was one of the top in the country. Yet, every night I would wander the streets, hoping for the chance to play a hero. Hoping for the chance to save a life. Hoping to take one. I did this for five years. And in those five years I took seven lives. There was no pattern, nothing to make police suspect a serial killer, and even if they had, I would have never been a suspect.

                I thought I was a hero. I thought I had been saving people’s lives by taking other ones. I was no hero. Look what it’s gotten me: nothing.

                I am seventy-three. I am alying here, at the end of my story, and I am telling you my secrets. Not for you to keep, I would never ask that. But for you to tell. Tell your father what I could not. Tell the world the truth about me.

                My secrets have worn me down. My secrets have destroyed my life. It may not seem that way, it may look as though my life was good. And while living, it was. But now? Now I am flooded with regrets. Secrets always seem like a good idea at the time, but secrets are the worst thing we can do to ourselves. If I could have another go, I would do things differently. If I—ah, hell. This is easy to say here and now that things would be different. The truth though? I’d probably do the damn thing over again, make the same mistakes and keep the same secrets. People always do the easy thing.

                Tell your father that I—.