PostSecret

This week I went to the PostSecret lecture at Bates College and yeah, I totally cried in public but I wasn't alone.

The PostSecret founder, Frank Warren, spoke about how and why he started the project and how it evolved into what it is today. He shared some of his favorite secrets that have been sent in as well as some secrets that can't be shared online or in the books, and then invited questions and secrets from the audience.

One girl said that she works in a grocery store, and whenever someone buys condoms she wonders what they're like in bed. If they buy the Trojan Magnums she can't help but look at their crotch.

Another girl's secret was that everything she did was for someone else- friends, family classmates- and that she didn't know how to live for or do anything for herself.

Someone said she was going to cosmetology school in hopes she can learn how to make herself as beautiful as her sister.

A young woman stood up and said, "My greatest desire is to get rid of my cell phone and laptop and move to a commune with my Latin professor, but I don't want anyone to think I'm a hippie."

A girl, in tears, said she had been laid off that day and was in a car accident on her way to the lecture and she wasn't sure how she was going to make it.

The one that made me cry (not just sniffle, but tears streaming down my face), and made the whole audience give out a sympathetic gasp/sigh was a girl who, the last time she'd seen her mother, told her she wished she was dead. A few days later, her dad called her to tell to her that her mom had passed away.

I didn't stand up and tell a secret at the lecture, but I am going to now:
The night before my grandmother died, I fell asleep before I said my prayers. I have always felt guilty about it as though I could have saved her with my prayer, even though she was sick anyway and I know this guilt is irrational.

I also have a silly secret: I think Liam's umbilical hernia (that healed on its own months and months ago) was the universe's way of punishing me for being so ridiculously freaked out by outties- or it could have been a simple lesson, like, "See? They're not so bad."

What's YOUR secret?

xoxo Nora