SHARE YOUR SECRET
Frank Warren gets a thousand postcards a week from around the world, from people revealing, usually anonymously, their deepest secrets. After publishing his first book in 2005, his project has taken off. He has found that while we think our secrets make us unique, they also tie us into our common humanity.
["This book is about] the inexhaustibility of secrets. When you think there aren't more, there are. I'm not shocked anymore," Warren said. "Sometimes I get the same secret on the same day from two different continents in two different languages."
He attended high school in Springfield Illinois and during a trip here, he says he learned that a high school teacher in Chicago displayed 300 postcards, revealing her students' secrets, but school officials called it "gratuitous" and "sophomoric" and made them take it down.
Perhaps the officials should've spoken to Warren. He says he wishes there was a book like this when he was a kid, struggling with his own secrets. You can send yours to Warren or post it online by checking out postsecret.blogspot.com/ Not only does the confession help ease guilt, but it may inspire others to finally deal with their own demons.
Here are some of the secrets revealed on postcards sent to Frank Warren, published in his new book MY SECRET.
SELF-PITY
"I wish guys loved me like they love my friends." (Perhaps they're turned off by your lack of self-confidence---fake it til you make it.)
HINDSIGHT
On a photo of a bride from the neck down...
"I wish I had not tried to grow up so fast. I feel like I missed some important parts of young adulthood. He left me anyway."
(He did you a favor---our parents' generation would've lived together for another miserable 20 years.)
RANDOM
I lick the inside of microwave popcorn bags.
(Why not just get a spoon and a can of Crisco?)
FANTASY
On a card with stick figures...
"I imagine what sex would be like with every person I interact with."
(Have fun trying to figure out which person in your office is doing this, and hope it's not the co-worker who licks the inside of microwave popcorn bags)
FETISH
"I want to have sex with a piano."
(I don't have the courage to search for a website devoted to this fetish.)
INFATUATION
"I call my friend really late at night, secretly hoping she'll fall asleep while we're on the phone. Sometimes she does, and then I like down to sleep too. I'm in love with her and I realize it's probably the closest I'll ever get to sleeping with her. But for now, it's enough."
(You're not in love” you're obsessed; move out of your mother's house and find someone who is interested in you---she isn't.)
PHONY
"I lied to fit in and now feel more alone than ever before."
(Because you are not unique any more.)
REGRET
A photo of a young woman hooked up to tubes in ICU:
"When you were in the ICU I took your picture. I wanted you to see what you looked like so that you might go into rehab. I never showed you the pictures, you never went into rehab, and I never forgave myself. I am so sorry."
"We all have a secret that would break your heart if you knew what it was,"Warren said. "And I think that if we all remembered that, there would be more tolerance and compassion in the world."