When I was 20 years old and newly married, I would pull up to the car at the traffic light, looking darling in my little Suzuki Samurai and smile at the guy next to me. I got smiles back most of the time. It made me feel girlish and pretty.
Then, I’d get this pit in my gut, “Oh my gosh! I’m married now. That old way is gonna have to go or I won’t be married for long.”
I’d go home and immediately confess, “Rock! I totally blanked out that I was married and smiled at the guy in the car next to me. I’m so sorry!”
You would have thought I had been dancing naked in the Oval Office with Bill Clinton and a box of cigars with how badly I felt.
Rocky'd be gracious with me and almost as soon as I told him, the issue became non-existent. I kept my eyes on the road at the red lights.
Two years later, we were going through a super hard ‘not-sure-we-were-gonna-make-it’ time in our young marriage. You know, we were kids....and we had 'issues.'
During that time, I was managing a music and arts school and one of the guys on staff was paying a significant amount of attention to me. I realized that I was getting dressed in the morning thinking of this other guy and waiting for him to stop by my office during the day for those few minutes of chatting time.
I kept the secret of that attention in my heart for a couple of weeks but one day while Rocky was pumping gas into my car, I stepped out of the passenger side and looked him right in the eye, “Michael’s paying a lot of attention to me at work and I’m enjoying it. Nothing’s going on but I’m feeling flattered and noticed by him and I’m not feeling that way with you. I want our marriage to work and I don’t want to have anything be a secret between us. I don’t want any other man’s attention to mean more to me than yours does.”
It was like having a big, blown up beach ball stuffed in my brain where it didn’t belong, taking up all the space and being the center of all my attention. Then, it got thrown out onto the sand, by the ocean. There’s a lot of sand and a lot of ocean and suddenly that beach ball seemed really tiny in the scope of all that was around it.
(Imagine cool beach ball picture here since I can't remember how to insert one.)
My confession was a sobering moment for Rock that he said he needed to have during a season when he was being kind of a weenie. It was a turn-around moment for him. And for me, the attraction with the other guy immediately died, disappeared, went kaput.
I have spent my life tattling on myself as a way to take the power out of a secret. To take that thing that seems larger than life and throw it out there into an atmosphere where it’s in a even larger place, giving it more proper perspective – which ends up where the problem is always smaller than I originally made it out to be.
=====
I'm a purist at heart.
I don't want to have a secret life. I've always wanted people to be able to come in to peek in my cabinets and read my journals after my life is gone at the ripe age of 103 and go, "Yup. That's Stacey. Here's a million cans of lentils in BPA-free coated cans, just like she always posted about."
Alignment.
I want my life to have alignment with
my heart
my values
my priorities.
And for you to be able to confirm that or not when you're with me.
And where it doesn't line up I want to be able to say,
"Yoohoo! Over here! I'm having an 'issue.' "
And by that, I mean, with myself, with my lack of alignment with what I value. I want to be able to see it
and be honest about it.
Now, some people handle that well.
And some people don't.
I can say, "My butt is fat and I'm not happy about it."
And folks respond differently.
Some say,
"I just love you, Stacey."
Others say,
"Don't say that!"
Some send me e-mails:
"Try my dietprogram-fitnessprogram-hypnotherapyprogram-walkingprogram-eatinghotdogstilyouthrowupprogram"
etc...
Some feel it's inappropriate of me to share
Some feel empowered ("Stacey said her butt is fat and I can be honest, too")
and some feel powerful.
And when I say, "some feel powerful" I don't mean in a good way.
Those people who feel powerful to know your secrets.
Okay, here's the deal: Some people consider that they're 'bonding' with you when they know this icky ucky stuff of your life.
And I don't mean that good bonding...that 'were-all-in-this-together' kind of thing and "I feel freer to share because someone else was honest" -- kind of thing. That thing is beautiful.
I'm talking about the people who feel that they hold a special power over you if they know your private details.
Those, are the people you can feel free to run from.
And leave skid marks.
Because anybody who needs to know something specifically yucky about you in order to bond with you isn't really looking to bond -- they're looking for power.
And they see information as power.
You don't need that headache of drama in your life.
Because that person, is often the kind of person who would use your most vulnerable moments against you.
They turn your honesty into a weapon.
And that, my friend,
is not
a friend.
For me, I'm pretty much an open book so, the thing that I told Amy, I would happily tell Susan and so on....so, it's hard for people to have power over my secrets when I really have very few secrets -- that makes me kind of slippery, I guess.
I like being slippery.
Which is aggravating for people who are looking for some handlebars of power in my life and are trying to 'bond' for the sake of power.
So, I just keep it kind of simple:
The power of a secret for me, is to tattle on myself.
The secret of power for me, is to tattle on myself.
Either way, I get to be free:
from the grip of a secret
and from the people
who need to know one.
(Okay, P.s. to the blog ---
First of all: Just because I'm an open book doesn't mean I expect you to be.
The standard, if you will, that I hold myself to is for me. I don't go around demanding you meet my standards of openness (unless, of course you're my husband. In that case, all sane rules are off and all double standards apply. Marriage is an alternate universe.
just kidding.
ahem...)
Anyway. As a friend I honor your personal standards and I honor mine. They don't have to be the same. Anybody who's trying to make you talk more than you want about things that you're not comfortable with in order to be a friend to you is someone I recommend you kindly send to voicemail. They are on a power trip and you are their project. When they can 'crack' you, they feel like they've won.
That
is
not
healthy.
And they
are
not
a friend.
You are a project, a conquest, a mountain to climb so that they can say, "I did it! I got her to defy her personal boundaries so that I can satisfy my insecurity."
Not
cool.
And second thing I want to say is this:
Just because I'm a tell-all about me doesn't mean I'm a tell-all about you. What we talk about is safe with me because your information is not 'power' to me. I don't need it in order to be friends with you.
Plus, I'm in my forties now and perimenopausal so, I can't remember a damn thing you said anyway.
Every joke is new.
Every secret is safe.
We're good (this is me giving you two assuring thumbs up.)
Now the exceptions to the last one are these:
1. If you are in a grudge with someone or you have a HYPERSTATE of privacy that is off the charts weird and you say, "Don't say anything about me" and a mutual friend asks me how you are, I am going to say, "Just dandy."
I will not say, "I'm sorry, but I've been forbidden from speaking about our mutually hyper-sensitive friend."
Yeah, count me out of the fine print on that contract.
and
2. All deals are off if you tell me you're going to hurt yourself or someone else. Those are not secrets those are torture chambers and if you don't want me to blow the whistle on you under that circumstance then, don't come to me.
So, whew, I feel better now.
Hope you do, too.
Is the font getting bigger or is it
just
me...
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 10:33AM