SSShhhSecrets
By Emmanuelle

 

Of course, we all have secrets! Tell me the name of one who doesn’t, and I’ll chew and swallow raw my pen and paper.  Correction please, I do not seem to use a pen to write articles nowadays; all right, I’ll chomp on the keyboard plus the monitor. My computer Louis (of Interview with Vampire fame) wouldn’t mind this dare of a bet; he knows you could not come up with a single name. His hardware is safe from my teeth.

Of course, we all have secrets – one or two, a few, too many, too much. From little secrets so miniscule you had forgotten them as soon you turned the first corner; to great big ones so colossal that on your deathbed, your spirit could not lift itself to crossover to the next world because of the sheer weight of its secret burden!           

A secret is a secret if you keep it to yourself from day one, throughout your lifetime and up to the last gasp of your breath. Neither a sigh nor a whisper slithers out through or from your lips; not even a flicker of a hint is glimpsed or even gleamed from your eyes.
   

If the time comes when you are so near to bursting, you feel I-just-have-to tell-someone-or-I’ll-go crazy, you better bite your tongue, count one to one hundred first. The moment you open your lips, the words will rush through – the secret will be out! And as the song goes: your secret is no secret anymore. It’s free-for-all; it becomes a topic for public consumption, deliberation and discussion.

If you are a public figure, any publicity is good publicity.

If you are a very private person, you might spend the rest of   you life cowering in shame, in fear of repercussions, in anticipation of open ridicule or the cruelest of all – communal pity. Just because you could not keep your mouth shut.  Just because you forgot your numbers, you failed to count one to one hundred.

You see, your best and closest friend may not always be at her/his best may not always having her/his options close. The walls have ears. Neighbors neigh; crabs crawl over one another; ants bite when pinched. News, especially juicy ones, sprouts wings; it flies fast, expands faster, and diversifies fastest.    

So, nobody will ever get to admire your ingenuity on how you almost always cheated in all your tests and had gotten away with it, from kindermath to board or bar. Fine. So, your weekend drinking buddies will never get to applaud your ventures into illicit affairs. Finer still. So, your wife or your husband will never know the reason why your I Do was so faint to the priest’s ears was you married not for love, but for her/his looks, name, money, power. Swell. Ssshhh these forever.

Of course, we all have secrets. Your Gucci bag is fake. Your Armani is straight from the grave – (H)ukayed. Your glorious hair has been dyed since you were forty, and that was eons ago. Your nose, your eyes, your flawless skin were inherited from your plastic surgeon. Your breasts were nipped or implanted; your tummy was tucked. Your perfect teeth not so perfectly there at all. These you may un-ssshhh, not much harm.

But then, how can these be ssshhhhed forever? That you plotted and hired assassins to annihilate all your enemies – the political foes, the journalists, the judge, the defendants’ lawyer (or the plaintiffs’ as the case may be), the defendants (or the complainants), the main witnesses, your wife/husband, your sibling’s wife / husband. That you planned and plotted to stay president-for-life, or how you elbowed to be elevated as president/prime minister of a new parliamentary government. That you manipulated the unrest among students, workers, ordinary concerned citizens to come out with enough justification for a declaration of martial law.

Ssshhh. Someone sleeps well tonight. Not the dragon, not the lion.

Ahh. A little babe just born.     

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