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Tuesday 22 October 2013

Secrets

"That's why her hair is so big. It's full of secrets." 



Secrets are a strange thing.

Everyone has secrets. 

Some people may share more than others, but everyone will still have secrets. 

I have now been at university for over six weeks and my Cancer remains a secret to 99% of people I have met here. Out of my twelve flatmates, four know; and one is a friend from home who knew anyway. The thing is, it's hard to keep a secret so big - strangely enough it comes up in conversation more often than you would imagine..and with me being so open about it and able to talk about it so casually at home, it's proved to be difficult to keep covering up my tracks when I accidentally blurt out a hint. 

I have just lay down and explained a very small part of the story to one of my closest flatmates. It's the first time I've spoken about it so flat out in so long. It's strange. I remember so many tiny little details; so many conversations with the exact words that were spoken from over two years ago..yet it is all still such a blur. The whole 10 months is such a blur. It felt good to get it out to him; relieving. It's just such a heavy piece of baggage to carry around. Sometimes I want to wear a sandwich board just explaining everything so that everyone knows..but at the same time I love that no one here knows, and that I'm not pre-judged for it and no one has sympathy for me and no one cares or is intrigued or 'inspired' by me. It's so liberating yet so confining. 

The 'Aw your hair was so long'  'how come you cut your hair so short?' and 'you look so different' comments that people throw around whilst looking back at photos; the 'What are those marks?' 'What are those scars from?' questions that are constantly asked. It makes me just want to rant about everything. But no. "Yeah, it was." "I just fancied a change" and "Aw I had an operation." are just now standard, automatic responses.

I'm now left wondering how much longer I will have this secret for - surely it will come out one by one; people will come across my blog, or I will blurt something that will all put the several small jigsaw pieces together and people will begin to figure it out. It's just not the type of thing you introduce into conversation during freshers week. 

"Hi. I'm Laura, I'm from Edinburgh and I had Cancer.."

I don't want to tell people. I fully accept that they will all find out but I won't be the one to tell them; and maybe I should be..but I don't want to.


Other people in my flat will have secrets that they're bottling up, so I can keep mine if they can keep theirs. That's fair, right?

Anyway, another pointless blog. Just wanted to get all of this down. 

Goodnight X