I'll Tell You Some Secrets

I've thought about making a Post Secret postcard, but just haven't gotten around to it.

Secrets lose their power when you put them out in the open. They eat at you from the inside and I'm pretty sure they probably cause cancer.

Here are some of mine:

When I don't answer my phone, most of the time it's because I am using my caller ID and don't really feel like talking to the person who is calling.

I hate to talk to anyone for at least two hours in the morning. That's why I need to get up at 5:30 -- so I can putz around in silence until I leave at 7:30. When I go away for the weekend with Jim, I hate when he yammers at me as soon as I get up. He doesn't know that I lay in bed in my little guest room and read until I'm ready to face his morning chirpiness.

When I read the tabloid newspapers, I try to figure out which stories will become "Law & Order" episodes. Then I try to fine it down to, "Original? SVU? Criminal Intent?"

I have started and deleted about a dozen posts about my mother. I am trying to come to grips with the idea that one day in the not-so-distant future the words "mother" and "father" as they relate to my life are going to be erased. I'm afraid of what will happen to me when my mother dies.

Part of me still believes what my mother told me -- that the world will always be nicer to blonde girls than to girls who look like me. Generally, she was right.

When cracky-crackhead's dog barks incessantly in the yard behind the building, first I call 311. Then, sometimes, I throw garbage out my window at it.

I had an abortion in 1991 and I'm not 100% sure that the guy who took responsibility for it, paid for it, and went to Planned Parenthood with me was the father. He has never known. I never told the other guy (who was my boyfriend), I was pregnant, because we had broken up by then.

I was molested on the Williamsburg Bridge at 10:00 on a hot Sunday morning in June of 2004.

Once during the transit strike, I stopped on the Williamsburg Bridge and looked around at the other people walking home in the cold. I peered through the fence at the river below and wondered if anyone would be fast enough to stop me if I climbed up and over. I realized that my fall would be broken by the subway tracks, so I just kept walking.