Creative Writing Junior year of High School my teacher presented
an exercise called Postsecret. The exercise required us to write down a secret,
insecurity… a fear. The exercise was meant to be private and as we sat in our
own area of the classroom we had the opportunity to accept vulnerability. At the end of the exercise she would collect
the papers and disburse them around the classroom for us to view.
I remember the secrets. Personal, deep and emotional.
Then, there were the secrets that were not necessarily as
deep to the reader but to the author felt like it was the hardest confession in
their life. Even if the confession was anonymous.
Then, there was me. I was not popular. I didn’t have loads of
friends. In fact, I had a group of best friends I could count on one hand and
that’s all I wanted. More importantly, I
had my parents. I had two people who loved me more than anything in the
entire world. My dad was my biggest fan and my partner in crime. I was blessed
with the greatest gift of all, parents who loved me more than life itself.
Loosing that gift was my biggest fear. This led me to my Postsecret:
I am afraid that my
dad won’t be around long enough to walk me down the aisle.
I remember carefully looking at my peers expressions and
reactions every time they looked at my card. I saw tears, I saw shock and more
importantly I saw pain in the people that could relate. It’s really amazing
being able to find a connection from one expression and not knowing a single
thing about a person. But I did. I could tell right away the people who feared
the same as me.
The exercise ended, I graduated high school and three years
passed until I was a sophomore in College. It was on this day three years ago
when my Postsecret was no longer a piece of pen and paper. It was a reality.
Dominick Santucci, a best friend, a brother, a husband, a
grandfather, an uncle, a hard worker and the best daddy in the entire world left us.
And “left us” was the only way I considered my dad’s death.
He just simply, left. But when you think of “left us” it sounds harsh. It
sounds like it was a choice. I think the hardest part of this battle with time
is you never really have a choice.
Recently it became very apparent to me that: while when your
time ends is not a choice, how you live is. I met people in the past year that
have experienced tragedy and have lost hope during the time when they could
still feel what hope is. They thought that the state of being they were
currently in was miserable enough to just choose defeat. We all feel doubt and
we all need someone to help guide them out but what I really learned from those
people is:
You can find help to guide you out, but you can’t rely on
them to cross the finish line.
I experienced a sort of tragedy that I know millions of
people in this world can identify with but that does not make me qualified to
fix someone else’s broken puzzle.
It has been nearly six years since I wrote that Postsecret
in my Junior Year Creative Writing class and I thank Ms. Schild for the opportunity
to understand that your confession can help someone else admit theirs. And when
they finally decide to do so, and if in fact it becomes a reality, I hope that
they choose to keep living.
For me, I picked a life to live for two. Daddy and me.
