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Tell me your deepest, darkest secret.

Discussion in 'Tilted Life and Sexuality' started by Xerxes, Oct 30, 2012.

  1. Freetofly

    Freetofly Diving deep into the abyss

    My thoughts exactly!:D
     
  2. Zen, you're quickly becoming one of my favorite posters in this corner of the internet. :D

    EDIT TO KEEP ON TRACK:

    I also bite my nails. Not because it's a compulsion, but because I'm too lazy to just clip them.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  3. rogue49

    rogue49 Tech Kung Fu Artist Staff Member

    Location:
    Baltimore/DC
    Not that I'm discouraging participation, but other difficulties for anyone
    First, admitting it to themselves.

    Second...and even more so...even though we are effectively anonymous...this is still a social board,
    and we want to have the respect of our readers...so no one is going to note anything truly dark.

    So these are more like "safe" issues...those that can be admitted, but then not shunned...even on a Net Message Board.

    So...have at it, use this like a circle at a clinic.
    Hmm...I've always wanted to try that...haven't had the chance.

    Me, I'm just trying to clean up my life.
     
  4. Joniemack

    Joniemack Beta brainwaves in session

    Location:
    Reading, UK
    25 -30 years ago I could have spent a few hours listing my deepest, darkest secrets. At one time or another I've seen them all exposed to the daylight where they crumbled into dust like vampires. I struggle to think of anything going on with me these days that would fit the topic.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  5. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    I really believe that.

    I keep my greatest fears and failures within reach in my mind.

    It's probably not healthy to assiduously haunt yourself with such things but I can imagine it being far worse to forget them.
     
    • Like Like x 5
  6. Joniemack

    Joniemack Beta brainwaves in session

    Location:
    Reading, UK
    Of course, the ideal solution is to learn from them and move on.
     
    • Like Like x 3
  7. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    Very Hallmark. Is it really that easy? For me, the whole "learning" part involves a lot of fear and discipline.

    You wear the feelings around like a bad tattoo and you Clockwork Orange slideshow yourself before bed.

    I guess maybe we're talking about radically different things. Would make sense since we're polar opposites.
     
  8. Joniemack

    Joniemack Beta brainwaves in session

    Location:
    Reading, UK
    You're still young, grasshopper. ;) The whole learning part involves time and the benefit of hindsight. There is no fear in changing behaviors or the need to strong arm them into socially acceptable places when you get a point where those terrible secret deeds are no longer relevant to who you are today. Revisiting them becomes a trip down someone else's memory lane. You know it was you but just can't manage to identify with that "you" anymore. It's taken me 30 years to stop cringing with shame every time I'd remember how I stole a precious, irreplaceable, handed down through something like 20 fucking generations, family heirloom from my mother and sold it for the cost of a bag of dope. It's not me anymore. I paid the price, felt the remorse, made my amends in triplicate, and learned that I never want to go through it again. Not like that. And I don't have to because I've moved on and there's no reason to go back there anymore.

    Probably. I figure I'm ahead of the game as long as I still know what I'm talking about.[/quote]
     
  9. Plan9

    Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

    Location:
    Earth
    Eh, pretty sure once you hit a few critical landmarks in life, you're no longer young... you're just human.

    I mean, when do you stop being young? When you're old? Hmm. Whatever.

    I guess. George Eliot seemed to see the matter in a different light. The flesh of our present is held up by the skeleton of the past, all that artsy stuff. Point is: You might not be an emotional cripple over some fuck-up from a decade or three ago, but if you're a decent human being you can still feel the place where it hurt and it still guides you to keep your hand away from that hot teakettle. As some famous author once described scars: they don't ever go away, they just stretch and fade with time. Maybe I beat dead horses in my head by erecting and polishing these ugly brass monuments to my many personal failures and fuck-ups... but it helps keep me honest, keeps me motivated and may prevent me from repeating my past mistakes.

    I've got a room temperature IQ and try to travel light whenever possible... so my albatrosses have to be simple and mental.

    Hell, I need an AARP 'terp to figure out what you're saying half the time. Probably just the clueless youngster in me. ;)
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2012
    • Like Like x 1
  10. Innocentmiss

    Innocentmiss Getting Tilted

    Ok, so some people are telling their secrets so here is one of mine. I have spent so long fearing I wont be accepted for who I am, I put all my energy into being what and who I think other people want me to be(or what I think I should be). I no longer know who I am or what I want, pleasing other people no longer rewards, instead takes me further away from who I am. I am unsure of basic things, what's my favourite food/colour/clothes? I am too used to going with the flow or predicting others needs and wants and simply matching! Is it too late? Also how do you change in a small community? I wore a skirt a couple of weeks ago and received several comments that it was nice but who had made me wear a skirt, or random statements like 'you don't wear skirts!'
     
  11. Zen

    Zen Very Tilted

    Location:
    London
    Hi Innocentmiss


    First I'll mention that I am loving Joniemack and Plan9 so much right now. They might see polar opposites. I see a left eye and a right eye triangulating to measure distance and give perspective on an issue that is one of my core burners. Feck.

    OK, you and me now. I could have written your post. Talkabout been there done that and to some extent still AM there, doin' it and NOT lovin' it.

    I know the feeling of an empty core. My previous life's mission to find out what pleased others and to implement that. Absent that, then nothing except the feeling that I am not doing what I should.

    The kicker is that the emptiness is not without judgement: "you Should fill it … please others" BUT without a self to please, sooner or later, I'd come across as false … because anybody whom I was pleasing who thought "WHO is this person who is pleasing me" would try to find out, and they'd find … NOTHING behind that nice person. I'd been taught that 'being nice' was ENOUGH, indeed, that more than that was intrusive. So I never understood why person after person whom I thought was a close friend stopped liking me ….. it was because they could not find anybody in there to like.

    Oh Fuck … this is close to being my darkest secret …. Not one Action, but an entire Way Of Being. And years of totally NOT understanding how come if I was being nice, good, helpful etc, I was somehow stuck on the outside, lonely, sometimes frustrated rejected. I remember some people screwing their faces up saying "But What Do YOUUUU want???" While I'd have tears at the back of my throat, but could only say "I don't want anything …. I'm not doing anything wrong, am I?" And they'd snarl.

    Now, Innocentmiss, I am slowly moving out of and beyond this … in the manner of one who's in that film where they're in quicksand and WERE up to the neck, but have managed to get to the point where they've freed their upper body, and so they're only waist deep.


    If you're 'in the quicksand' and I'm half out of it, then what I'm about to say is my 'best so far' ….. and the image I've got, which is UNflattering to both of us, is of elephants with their trunks holding on to the tail of the elephant in front of them ……. In a few years, I hope you'll be writing a post to someone, and you'll remember this image and start laughing out loud. Me … I'm still holding on to the tails of people who are, themselves still emerging …….

    And I say to you You Never Got a chance to prove that the Real You was Unaceptable. 'They' did not give you that chance. Not because the real you WAS unacceptable, but because ANYTHING that did not fit within a version of an 'acceptable' you IN 'THEIR' EYES was UNacceptable. I'm saying it wasn't about you at all.

    The 'You who was NOT fitting their box was BY DEFINITION bad/wrong/odd/weird/inappropriate/immature/behaving like a child of two/not being 'yourself'/not being 'who you really are'/behaving 'beneath yourself'. Blatantly simple example: IF you'd been a sickly child in a family of athletes, which believed that ONLY athletic people were 'worthy' ….. then somehow, you'd be being 'wrong'. Similarly, if you were showing great promise as a Long Distance Runner and Tennis Player … in a family of Couch-Potatoes who felt shown up by your prowess.

    "WHO MADE YOU WEAR A SKIRT" ………. WOWWWW. This was the psychological hand-grenade that got my guts bursting into a mega-share, which I'll NOT delete, though I feel far more pain about this than about 'Horsey', I really do …


    In a 'small community' … when someone does something different, and if that someone is 'needed' to have a limited identity or sense of self, then Variance From The Norm … EVEN IN SMALL THINGS …. Or variance from the EXPECTED …. Gets heavy clap-downs and sanctions. It's not an honest "I don't like that skirt you're wearing", or "I prefer it when you're predictable"… it's not attacking your judgement … notice you're not being called an idiot for liking it – you don't even get the respect of being 'allowed' a "YOU" in the first place …. Except for "YOU DON'T" ….. or "Someone ELSE MADE YOU" … which crushes the idea that you have ANY mind of your own. Imagine you having lived a few years of those kind of messages and imagine what, over time, that could have done to your entire view of how the world was, and how YOU ... 'wasn't'.



    "How do you change in a small community"
    May I offer an alternative phrasing "How do you change IN SPITE OF a small community?"

    And I say

    1: keep hold of the fact that it IS small and that there is a bigger world outside, which is composed of Many small communities. Some small communities say "We are all that there is". Other small communities say "There are others similar and others different". Other small communities say "We KNOW about some small communities that say 'we are the only one .. the only real one' – we know of them and we do understand people who are struggling to emerge beyond them"
    2: Realise that you WILL get flack, and that for you to find out 'who you are' will NEED stuff external to that community. This could include this forum, also whatever 'sacred privacy' you can get in you rown room or walks in the forest or park.
    3: Beware of false freedom provided by other small communities composed of small people who seem to be the 'Great Outside' … but are in fact reflections, with different colours, of the community they helped you leave. Cult to cult, frying pan to fire.


    This next bit might sound weird … I'd need to write a book or provide a reading list to justify the following, so if it fits your experience to some extent, then good, and if not, well … er .. also good, though I'll feel a bit of an idiot for missing the mark. Here goes: Some small communities NEED one of the members to struggle a bit … it gives them the opportunity to Actively Demonstrate their 'solidarity' with whatever closedness they espouse. They need a few black sheep, otherwize the white sheep would have nothing to feel 'good about themselves' in relation to.

    This next bit won't sound weird:
    "I should know WITHOUT having to be told"
    It means that YOU have to do all the heard and subtle thinking work. It may have become a habit, and you have probably developed your observational skills to an expert level …. And STILL have the ability to get it wrong.


    Err ………. I'm coming to the end of this post, Innocentmiss, and I feel churned up. Yes … this .. this Way Of Being IS one of my best kept secrets in myself, that you put into words. I'm therefore flailing around … partly to double check with you to what extent I'm saying stuff that's relevant to YOU rather than to just MY own stuff, and partly to throw some ideas, some safety lines to you … or an elephant's tail … of how to progress out of that stuff.


    Yes, there ARE more ideas about how to build a Positive Identity … some positive answers to the question "Who am I and What do I Want" but at the moment, the best I dare to say is to offer you the following phrases for you to put on post-it notes on your forehead and look in the mirror and see/feel how they best or least fit Who You Are Now in your Present Situation ….

    "I am the Prisoner and I want to survive the burdens which originally probably came from the outside, but which I am now doing to myself from habit, at the expense of other stuff that I cannot grasp but that I know exists and that I have a right to approach"

    "I am the escaper and I want to move beyond the boundaries of my small community … to have freedom .. to Give MYSELF freedom to move both INSIDE and OUTSIDE it" (in AND in spite of being in a small community)

    "I am the explorer … I have an exquisite set of skills, which I Never wanted in the first place. Abilities that were forged in furnaces NOT of my own choosing. I am a navigator of others' desires and have a well trained sense of what makes others tick. I CAN go where I want with this skill … there are MANY people could benefit from my abilities BUT who would, in addition, be happy for me to wear whatever the heck I like. People whom I can Still please … without having to Disregard mySeLF

    Innocentmiss .. I'm totally floundering now … please dive into this, with my apologies, and wrestle what you read into some kind of sense. Useful sense.

    I'm apologising because I am NOT editing this beyond a spellcheck ….
    Because … and …. Er …. to echo Fangirl and Freetofly
    IF I read what I'd written, I'd have to kill me.

    Take care.
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2012
    • Like Like x 5
  12. Freetofly

    Freetofly Diving deep into the abyss

    I love you Zen! You are simply the best!
     
    • Like Like x 1
  13. Innocentmiss

    Innocentmiss Getting Tilted

    Wow Zen, thank you for your reply. I wasn't even sure my ramblings made sense so after several edits I thought I'd let someone else figure it out. So much of what you said rang true for me, but I will need another read or two to process what you have said. For me I have started a process of being more self aware, and catching myself in moments where my behaviour is harmful to myself. I then try to reflect back and use techniques I learned in university for critical analysis to understand how I come across to others. My goal at the moment is to try and say 'no' at least once a week - and mean it. I am also trying to do things for myself even if it surprises people, if need be I just do them without telling anyone. I started windsurfing and climbing last year, comments I received from people ranged from a surprised look to things like 'but you don't like cold water' or 'why on earth are you doing sports'. These comments struck me as very strange - my favourite thing in the world is sports - I might not be any good, indeed picked last for team sports in PE but I still loved it. Especially in school, it was the one subject without any humiliation from reading and writing - I loved it!

    In the end ignoring who I am has cost me dearly, I have very few real friends - friends who I feel I could tell anything to and they wouldn't miss a step. The rest are friends for show, I would never reveal a quarter of who I am or might be to them( I feel like I am only now going through the teenage rebellious stage of trying out new things). I can count my real friends on one hand and they live scattered over the globe. I have split up with my boyfriend of 9 years basically due to my inability to like myself, or know what I wanted. The friction that pleasing someone 24/7 can cause is unimaginable - firstly they get annoyed at you because they cant figure out what you want and need from the relationship (as I simply change and reflect back what I think they want me to be!) Secondly I when trying to do things I wanted I was faced with 'but you don't like x, y , z'! Being told what I can/ cannot like is simply more soul destroying than me deciding for my self what they do/don't want me to like. Ironically I have spent 9 years building this person up to believe they matter, they are worth it, building him up to believe in himself. He is a-lot steadier and will now admit he feels love and feels like he could have a future, he also finally has a permanent job which he is good at and likes.

    It appears to me the more I try to please and help others and be nice the worse off I become. (Hope this makes sense.)
     
  14. Zen

    Zen Very Tilted

    Location:
    London
    Hi Innocentmiss
    Yes. This makes total, and quite painful sense.
    Take care.
     
  15. flat5

    flat5 Vertical

    Location:
    Amsterdam, NL
    no
     
    • Like Like x 1
  16. Cwtch38

    Cwtch38 Bat Shit Crazy

    Location:
    Uk
    My secret is that I am trying to hold it all together and even though outwardly I seem happy and capable, inside I am screaming at everyone to get me off this ride. I am a master at hiding my true emotions from colleagues and my family but my health is shite at the moment and I can't hide the weight loss anymore, and people keep asking if I am ill.
    I am not ill, I have just secretly lost the plot.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  17. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    I was in an emotionally abusive relationship—to a rather severe degree—for seven years beginning when I was seventeen.

    I'm still suffering somewhat from the effects of it.
     
  18. highjinx

    highjinx "My phobia drowned while i was gettin' down."

    Location:
    venice beach
    i feel capable of just about anything but lack the courage to commit to something and see it through. i go through life feeling like i don't deserve any more than what a given day doles out to me. and i'm terrified of someone depending on me and me coming up short for them, so i sit on my hands.

    i can sit down at a table with someone and have them list my talents and skills & gratitude & even acknowledge some myself when asked to, but when i get in front of a bathroom mirror alone, it all disappears. i don't believe in myself.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  19. Lucifer Slightly Tilted

    Location:
    The Darkside
    I don't like children. No, really.
     
    • Like Like x 4
  20. Innocentmiss

    Innocentmiss Getting Tilted

    I wish you well in secretly putting your self back together, one small victory at a time.
     
    • Like Like x 2