I remember being a child back home and some of the ridiculous country shit we would do. We had all these secret spots we would go to do crazy kid stuff, but one of my favorite things to do was to go on my grandfather’s boat with some of my cousins, and practice my cussing. It was a safe haven for us to do some shit we would never do publicly, and we also knew that no one on the boat would tell. Secrets become of way of connecting people together when you share them, but when you’re on the outside of a secret, the relationship becomes disjointed. You cannot be your full self around those who don’t know. It becomes difficult to navigate who knows what and you have to compartmentalize people and places based on the things you share with them. Secrets can be hurtful, malicious, and dehumanizing if you allow them to be. For the sake of healing and moving forward in radical honesty, it’s time to cleanse those secrets that have kept me from being present in relationships, learning to properly express emotion, live in authentic peace, and move forward in healing.

I had a therapy appointment this past week and of course it was quite the intensive experience, filled with revelations and knowledge. This was the first time we explored the childhood trauma around molestation and the space I was in after writing about it. She asked me questions, like she always does that caused me to pause and think:

When you told your story, did you name names? Have you told your parents the specific details around people and who actually hurt you? Why are you carrying this secret?

I had to think strongly about this. Of all the things that I’ve shared with my parents, all the things that our relationship has endured, and gains we’ve made, why I hadn’t shared the exact details of the story with with them? I could use the excuse that my secret isn’t just my secret because a few of my family members have shared this experience. The reality is that there is a fear associated with completely owning this narrative and not being able to own the reactions as a result. I sat on that couch and thought about all the things my parents would say if I told them what had happened and exactly who did it. I thought about what it would do to them emotionally to hear that their own child had experienced such pain. I thought about how the revelation of the complete truth would make them feel and how I could spin the narrative in a way that would not hurt them and where I could control their reactions. I thought about what it would do to my family and the future of our interactions. I completely recognize that since my grandmother passed in 2003, the family lost it’s matriarch, and as much as we try to keep it together, my generation hasn’t been as close as the ones before us. A lot of it stems from this exact trauma. Telling this truth could literally destroy the fabric of my family as a unit. I could keep it a secret until everyone dies, but doesn’t that perpetuate the idea of sweeping things under the rug, and hiding it in the back of the closet?

Secrets are toxic….

First of all… Fuck you, Mary for these questions. … But yeah. One of the things she told me during this session is that secrets disrupt the authenticity in relationships. I’m back in a place of having a relationship with my family and my parents, after avoiding it as much as I could for years, while holding on to this huge rock that no one sees. For almost 20 years, I’ve carried it. As a child, a teenager, and now an adult, trying to function in a world where black men live traumatic experiences every time they hear a siren, or see flashing lights. I’m an adult who has a myriad of lived experiences and I just want some peace. It’s my story to tell and I have to own it, regardless. My parents deserve to know what happened to me and I have to be the one to tell them. They have to sit with that knowledge and deal with it in a way that I can’t control, and keeping it from them isn’t allowing me to be the son I should be for them. Let’s be clear. I’ve made some pretty terrible decisions and reacted in some very damaging ways that caused them some grief while carrying this burden, but because there was no context, they had no clue as to why I was doing the things I was doing. It’s been a very stress induced, anxiety riddled road, and I’m happy that I’ve been able to get to place or recounting it, but saying it out loud and naming names hasn’t been a rock I’ve been ready to release. I like holding it because I can control the sphere of its influence. A part of me wants to apologize to lessen the sting of the blow, but apologizing for something that happened to me is what got me into this position in the first place. A part of me knows that this is the atomic bomb and it is going to be Hiroshima all over again. My family could possibly become a war zone and I have to be ready to own the fact that my story could start a war that I’m not sure if I’m prepared to fight.

So here’s where we are. I’ve set a hard deadline of disclosing this info before August 1. It has to be face to face. It has to be ugly and raw. We have to see each other’s pain so we can recognize and heal from it. I’m not sure of when my next trip home will be, but this forces me to take a trip before that deadline. I want to release the guilt from the trauma. I want to release the guilt of not speaking and allowing people to get away with hurting me and others. I want to finally release the guilt of leaving home and what it meant for me to begin to find peace in a place not associated with past events. I want to release the anxiety and trauma of what home has meant for me and why it’s so hard for me to want to go there. I’m ready for all of it. We’re four months into the new year, bitches. The path to healing is a rocky one, but at least we’re on it and staying the course. Baby steps are still steps. Crawling is a forward motion. Keep moving forward and allow the healing to happen. I promise we’ll get there together. Until next week, my loves.