Dirty Little Secret

I have a few guilty pleasures in life. This blog post is about one of them.


It all started on sad day of mild desperation (that probably had something to do with chemistry, boys/lack thereof, or confusion regarding my general overall direction in life) but once you pop, the fun don't stop. No, I'm not talking about drugs or what/who I was doing around this time last year, I am talking about this website. Though this logic doesn't usually help when I'm trying to comfort my friends, I've always found an intense amount of relief comes from knowing that there are tons of people in the world who are probably going through exactly what you are, or maybe even far worse. Yeah, your life sucks now, but at least you're not pondering suicide or overcoming child molestation. Dissastified with something in life? No worries, you're one of at least a million, and the world still seems to be functioning normally.

It's interesting to see that secrets actually tend split four ways. A large chunk are somewhat serious, profound truths that the author might well deny if ever confronted with (eg: "I live in a small, rightwing Christian town and I'm gay!"). The second aren't entirely secrets at all, but more like furtive, direct messages hoping to be found by happenstance. Their creators, for some reason or another, decided actually telling the intended recipient was a bad idea, but they were just so overcome with feeling they had to at least feed the fantasy that the message might still get through somehow. (These first two account for most of the emoness I'll be discussing later). The third kind are usually some sortof statement that's no secret at all, and really just intended for a mass audience that post secret is facilitating the attention of. The fourth run the gamut of categories, but they're more lighthearted and fun. Here's a personal favorite:

(And you all thought academia was a stretch...anyways...)

Now since the discovery of this great treasure trove of humanity my quality of life has generally improved; but I still like to check in every week anyway. After awhile the content of the cards does become a little pathetically predictable and wreak of emo drivel, but maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss this. The majority of the cards contain a truth that's had a major, defining influence in someone else's life. While we all can distract ourselves with hobbies, TV shows, and (to a slightly less frivolous degree) jobs and careers, It's a nice reminder that the most important things in life often end up being the quality of our relationships with other people. Furthermore, it's nice to think that the world does still contain a few people who seem to really care about each other (even if it is often in that slightly overdone, emo, unrequitted way) or people who at least aren't the cold, heartless type that I generally figure the world is full of.



Long story short- keep 'em coming, I'm listening.