Drawers

We all have secret lives.

Secret parts of ourselves, kept in secret places, like drawers that reach into the dusty dark and keep your fingers grasping like knobbly ghosts.

People are so surprised when we show these parts of ourselves. But why? Don't we all have hidden sides? Stories to tell that are never told?

Sometimes, these places are not very secret at all. Now we can stow them away all over the web -- where strangers may peruse your pictures and words in the safety of anonymity, while we do the same with theirs.

There is comfort in not knowing each other prior to this instant. There is wonder, delight, disdain, disappointment, nonchalance, ignition, mutual passion -- but we remain strangers. We can enjoy each others' company free of baggage; free of the past. In the moment, nothing else matters.

Secret lives are lonely lives. But in some ways they are also a joy.

To invite someone you know well (in your main sphere of life) into your hidden places is to extend the friendship to intimate new levels. But you don't always have to extend the invitation.

At this secret party, people can invite themselves. They can pop by unnoticed, surprising you, surprising themselves; by thinking that they knew you and finding out they were wrong.

So who leads the party? Who holds the key to the drawers? Was there ever a key?

And who do we trust with it?



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