The Secret

It was part of me before I even knew who I was, a part that emerged as colors and feelings, thoughts too intricate to even take shape in the beginning. Along with my ability to talk and walk and draw pictures with my red crayon, it grew into something real. It was a part of my imaginary world, a world where people with real names and real faces and real actions did real things, no one else could see.

Then I went to kindergarten and the simple, innocent day dreams of a creative five year old turned nap time on the throw rugs of a school's tiled floors into adventures in tents with real names and faces that others could see. Only I was sure they didn't see what I did.

I continued to grow. All of me growing in thought, word and deed into the beautiful adolescent who felt the awkwardness and isolation of all adolescents. And that part of me grew too. Like shaving under my arms and hiding the budding pimples on my nose, I not only had no desire to share it, I would have been mortified to do so. I felt different, unique and thought that maybe I was indeed an odd and strange creature, different from all the other people I knew.

This part of me that I would never share became richer and began to flesh out into the adult I would become, an intricate and important part of me, like breathing in and breathing out. I began to spin myself a cocoon, a sticky sweet gossamer coat of armor that allowed me to peer out at the world, but kept the world from seeing me clearly.

Coming of age meant I had to maintain my facade outside of the cocoon so that people continued to believe I was beautiful and perfect, inside and out. I had to fly a little higher, sing a little sweeter, work a little harder to cover up the marks my red crayon kept making on the inside of my thoughts. Afraid that if anyone could read the tales it told they might think less of me.

Until one day I found a mirror whose reflection saved me as surely as any knight in shining armor. There I saw the eyes of others who were struggling to take off their facades and move quietly forward and I realized that I was not alone