Secret Keeper

Today was lo-ong and I am exhausted.  Typically, I like to think I am a fairly articulate person.  A little roundabout, yes, but articulate. Not tonight. When I am exhausted I babble and then I apologize for babbling in that awful self-deprecating way. We'll just call it a Monday. 

Words and language are funny like that.  They help us know what we are about, especially when our receiver listens well and graciously.  As I listen to my clients, I know we're digging some sort of therapy groove when I hear them say something and then see them cover their mouths- frightened by the taste of: "I think my mom is a liar" or "I am scared of my own sister" It's courageous to let such words free, they are near and dear, and speaking them somehow makes them truer than we may like. 

And so words like these fell on me tonight, some softly, some thumped hard.  I cannot cover my ears.  I am open and calm but I know my eyes are always curious, and if the speaker is ready, I can beg for more. " I just don't think she wants us that much." Thump! Thud! Crash! Ouch, I want to say. But it's not about me, is it? 

So, I say, thank you for telling me your secrets, which are, perhaps, the most tightly-wound kinds of words.  Like coils and springs.  You cannot contain them all alone, but they just might stretch between us and be alright.  And in the meantime, I think, you are brave to keep this all together, all these coiled and twisted words.  

"Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box

to the priest-he's the doctor

he can handle the shock"

-Peter Gabriel