Secrecy

There's a silence about it.

Don't show weakness.


Sometimes it's pride.  The feeling that you should be just fine, and anything less is a failure.  And you're too proud to fail.

Sometimes it's spite.  A need to keep others who don't deserve a crowbar into your heart at a distance.  So you shut up around them, keep it to yourself.

Sometimes it's protective.  To prevent people who will use your soft spots to work over and manipulate you, or simply, to feature you in their own private show.

Now, too, it's awareness.  Of people who are most alerted to the vulnerable.


I am the vulnerable.


I am keenly alerted to the fact that I have a target on my back.  When I am spoken to, I am analyzing.  How much do you know?  What do I tell you?  How will you use it - and when?  Not now, surely.  But when I drop my guard?  In a few minutes?  Days?  Years?  When does the backdrop change, the scene shift, and when do I find myself a victim again?

I am juxtaposed between refusing to be used and knowing it will happen.


I am stumbling from day to day, and

I am so lost without you


I could have done a great job

as a mom.


Fucking nobody will ever know,

least of all me.