Writing troubles away

We don't want to get in trouble, so we tell our kindergarten teacher that Joey ate the glue stick. We don't want to hurt feelings, so we gush that Grandma's brownies are just delicious even though no one, not even her cocker spaniel, wants to eat them.

These incidents are minor foibles often known as demonstrations of social grace or tact. But omissions of truth are not so innocent -- some secrets bleed a darker blood.

Everyone has secrets, and their degree of seriousness can vary from the name of a playful childhood crush to a shameful account of painful childhood abuse. The deeper the secret, the more emotional weight is born by whoever carries the baggage. By ingesting these secrets, we make our hearts burn.

Now, thanks the Internet, people can share their shameful slice of cake and keep it a tasty secret, too. On the popular blog PostSecret (postsecret.blogspot.com), people reveal their innermost confessions to the world, without the difficulty of confrontation.

There are many postcards at PostSecret. Some are sad ("I love my summer camp more than my home" and "I get angry at every mother who does not love her children as much as I would, if I could have them"), some are longing ("I made this copy of your key when I moved out hoping you'd ask me to come home.") and some aren't sad at all ("My mom is always losing her keys, but it's because I hide them" and "I'm in love with my realtor.").

PostSecret's creator, Frank Warren, told Newsweek he began the site as "an experimental art project." Warren distributed 3,000 blank, self-addressed postcards around suburban Washington, D.C., in locations such as restaurants, bus stops and in library books. His postcards encouraged finders to confess a secret and pop them back in the mail, returning the postcard to his home and fueling his project. To Warren's surprise, "people started home-making their own postcards, and they started coming from across America and around the world."

The medical reference Web site WebMD.com tells us that "the effects of shame and stigma can be devastating," and their consequences, for even the strongest individuals, "make us want to disappear." We don't want to deal with trials and tribulations, so instead of addressing our fears and insecurities, we make damn sure no one knows about them. Nietzche believed the most humane action possible was "to spare someone shame".

From medical experts to talk show hosts, it seems everyone's solution to relieveing such emotional distress is to confront its cause. Easier said than done. It is this nullification of outright shame, however, that people can now bare their souls to the entire World Wide Web without ever having their cheeks sting with shame.

Some may see PostSecret as merely another blog taking up a parking spot in cyberspace, but these messages carry great significance for many confessors and readers. Patricia Wallace, Ph. D, is an expert in how anonymity affects our ability to communicate and believes that an opportunity to confess while remaining nameless allows people "to display more intimacy or anger, and more extreme emotions than they would face to face."

Warren's conclusion is "some secrets that we think we're keeping, but those secrets are actually keeping us."

As one postcard promises to "say a prayer for every postcard I read," we are reminded that many of us will choose to keep our confessions unconfessed. But perhaps the knowledge that others struggle with skeletons buried deep in their closets will, in some small way, alleviate the feeling that we're the only one.

In that way, maybe a simple postcard can really help take off the edge.