Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
(
)
Date: October 06, 2021 01:37PM
Mormonism stood between me and the world. I conquered Mormon fears in my heart, but I found that the man I was after it was all said and done was complicated, nuanced, scarred, and carrying around a profound secret of a sad past. I have no problem trying to share my past with people, but it’s not always something they can understand. It’s better not to most of the time, but I crave understanding and intimacy with other people at the same time. On one hand, Mormonism damaged my healthy ability to keep secrets and prioritiize what other people need to know about me by making me feel guilty for everything. On the other hand, I have a cognitive disorder that affects everything from my job to my ability to date and I have a hard time explaining it without bringing up how Mormonism fucked me over. It’s not a given even for people familiar with my condition that people with my condition have experienced so much trauma or grew up with such skewed perceptions of privacy and intimacy. This is the intersection of many things about me and that have happened to me that have made me like this.
The question is this: how do you decide how much to share with someone and how much to hold back? How do avoid people goading you into spilling your secrets as you desperately and angrily try to explain how things really work? How do you avoid feeling guilty for keeping a secret?