I ate secrets. Binged with no purge. I ate them and smiled as my stomach cramped and my heart burned. I got scared and called Poison Control. They asked what I had eaten and I couldn’t tell them secrets so I told them the next closest thing: poison. They said not to vomit up the poison because it could increase the risk of injury to my throat and mouth. How could I explain that secrets burn the lips? That my throat burned from secrets that roughly went down?

The secrets hurt so bad that I couldn’t help but cry. I tried to keep the tears at bay like I did the secrets but tears have a momentum of their own and I couldn’t fight them and suppress the secrets.

The crying turned to sobbing, the sobbing to heaving, and the next I know I was throwing up my secrets. I was bowed over, damn near broken by my pain, the secrets hurtling from my lips, for the first time unchained. I spit out every ounce of bile, all of what was hidden and vile, and suddenly I felt light. My face was swollen from the tears and my body was sore from the fight.

I used to eat secrets. Now, only the truth will fill me. For a while, the secrets numbed me, but now I’ve regained my feeling.