The truth

Can you keep a secret?

I know you can’t always, but just this once can you keep this secret for me.

Years have passed and I just need an outlet an outlet for someone to hear the truth without any lies coating my words.

You see this isn’t easy for me to tell you, but I need to otherwise I will go insane, insane with guilt, insane with bottled up emotions, and the irony is… it’s not really my secret to tell.

 Yet it bugs me.

So I repeat again can you keep a secret?

No matter… I will tell you anyways for the time are ticking for me for redemptions.

It happened on the 4^th of July 1987.

Females were not seen as important and were used and tossed around like salad dressing. My friend and I were staying over at her grandparents’ house and there weren’t much to do so we decided to play some games outside.

We started off with tic tac to:  using sticks and stones and then it escalated to playing truth and dare.

Just saying for my sake we were high on sugar and our hormones were getting the better of us.

She asked me to kiss her or to run naked around her grandparents’ house. Being the shyer one of our two I kissed her.  It felt strange yet my hormones were going crazy and so I dared her to sneak out to the shop across the street and ask the store clerk for a 10c.

At that time it was still a lot of money a 10c.

The shop weren’t far away from her grandparents’ house yet it felt for me as I we are betraying their trust.

We were only sixteen back then. So going to shops weren’t illegal yet women were a nuisance to society.

She accepted my dare stating that I have the worst dares.

Can you keep a secret?

When I dared her it was early in the afternoon and by 6 she hasn’t arrived back home from the shop and I had to go home so I just left her. I didn’t know what happen, but yet I didn’t bother to say where she was.

Can you keep a secret?

After that day we were no longer friends , I didn’t know at the time why she were so distant with me , but later on the pieces seemed to flow into each other.

Her grandparents told me to never come to their house again and going to her parents’ house were also not an option seeing as they were moving to another town.

I were confused, hurt and most of all alone.

My best friend whom I secretly had a crush on was gone, without a word.

Was it me not telling the truth or her hating me for not waiting for her to come back to the house I didn’t know, but I missed her?

A few years past and I became more and more self-absorbed in my own shell thinking that I am just a mistake in society, that I should just also leave town like she did.

But then my mother passed away.

It was both a blessing and pain, a blessing for my long lost friend would attend the funeral and a pain for I have lost my only true friend left on earth my mother. You see my dad still stayed in contact with her family, but he didn’t mention this to me, but somehow I knew she would be there.

Before my mother’s funeral I was so anxious, anxious for I didn’t know if I would be okay without my mother: My only friend being buried. I didn’t know who to talk too, I didn’t know what to wear to a funeral to say goodbye forever.

At the funeral there weren’t a load of people and this disturb me for my mother were always there for other people and now there were almost no one to say goodbye to her. The loneliness crept up on me and I started to cry then I noticed my dad not crying at all.

Can you keep a secret?

He was treating the funeral better than I expected from someone practically attach to the hip of the one being buried. He were greeting the guests and smiling, giving hugs, and then I saw her.

My long lost friend.

She looked rather pale and worn out from the day already. Which I found odd for the day has practically not even started yet. At her side was a little boy. He had the same colour hair as she black, but his eyes were this amazing green colour.  He looked up to her as if he praised her.

This too I found odd for she weren’t even practically 2 years out of town yet her child looked as if he were just over a year old.

And then I realized.

It must be her son.

Can you keep a secret? 

The pieces seemed to fit, I realised why she had left. She despised me. She was raped when she went to the shop I dared her to go to.

How stupid I was.

Woman weren’t seen as anything by society back then, woman will be seen something by society now , I will make sure of that.

For my mother, but mostly for my friend.

I didn’t run to her I didn’t acknowledge her I just simple went and sat on a rock cried and sung.

Seconds past and I felt familiar arms wrap around me.

I knew it was her.

She held me tight and swayed me in her arms.

“It’s going to be okay, I won’t leave you.”

She said

I cried some more. How can she care so much for me , when it looked like a few years back I didn’t care.

“Mommy who is this?”

Her son called to her.

“Come.” She said.

“This is my friend who has forgotten me, but who I have not forgotten.”

So I ask you again: Can you keep a secret?