The world needs to hear your voice.
Yours.
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On Sunday night, Frank Warren of PostSecret came to Rutgers to speak at the Your A to Z Guide to Everything Intimate: Sex, Love, and Dating Conference held in the Busch Campus Center. He was the keynote speaker for the conference, and though the PostSecret project is not directly relevant to intimacy, it highlights a very important aspect of any relationship, something needed and basic for all of humanity:
Communication.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the PostSecret project, it started as a community based art project Frank Warren started, inviting strangers to write their secrets on post cards and mail them to him. The secret should be something a person has never told anyone before. For the past few years, the secrets he has received have ranged from hilarious to heartbreaking, on everything from fruit peels to wedding invitations to photographs. Every Sunday he posts up new secrets on his website. I have followed the project since it started (this must have been before high school, or around my freshman year of high school) because I am fascinated to see how honest people are when they can mask themselves in anonymity, giving their most personal thoughts up to a stranger. People who send their secrets in say they feel a sense of relief, like they have left burdens behind, and those who read PostSecret often recall the sense of community with other strangers who share the same secrets. In one way or another, I bet there is a secret that will speak to each and every one of us. It makes us all feel a little less weird, embarrassed, or ashamed when we know we aren't the only ones in the world to hold such a secret.
I am a total fangirl, so seeing Frank speak at Rutgers was actually my second time trekking out to see him (I spent an hour on a weekend bus just to get from Douglass to Busch!), with the first being in October, when I took a train and taxi to Monmouth University from Newark. I was at the Dodge Poetry Festival that day, and left early to see Frank speak because I thought it would be a once in a lifetime chance. Rutgers is awesome though, so of course he came to New Brunswick! ;]
The first time I saw Frank, I remember being very sick with asthma, but I was so enraptured by what he had to say about how telling secrets could lead to healing and releasing oneself from the past. I was there with a special person (<3) with whom I have shared many of my secrets, and understood the magnitude of trusting someone with such an important, defining part of yourself. The part of yourself that you don't always acknowledge, but that made you who you are today. On Sunday I left Douglass alone, Meteorology notes in hand for the long bus ride, and stood in line for an hour to get a good spot in the Busch Multipurpose Room. I made friends with the girl who stood in line behind me, and she told me she had never heard of PostSecret until about a week ago when the Facebook invitation to meet America's Most Trusted Stranger went viral all over the Rutgers network. I was so grateful to be able to see Frank TWICE within half a year, and I hope it won't be the last.
Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting on my Rutgers-home turf, or that so many familiar faces (though I don't know names) were in the audience sharing this experience with me, but I felt overwrought with emotions in the best way possible. I teared up listening to Frank speak, and I teared up as my fellow Rutgers classmates were able to admit to things they never had the courage to speak up about before. I never had the courage to step up to the microphone at the end of either of the sessions to share a secret with everyone, nor have I ever sent in a post card, but I have been so passively connected to the project for so long. Frank relayed some of his own painful (and also some funny) memories to us, trusting all of us as strangers to be good listeners, and said he has learned that there are two kinds of secrets. One kind are the secrets we hide from others. The other kind are secrets that we hide from ourselves, that we are too scared to face.
"Every day we have a choice--let it haunt us, or we can share them and let them bring us to the light."
Do you want to know one of my secrets?
I am a very happy, confident, and outgoing person, but I wasn't always this way. I don't really recognize the girl I was in middle school, or at the beginning of high school. I hit some hard times, as everyone does on the amazing journey that life is, and felt like I was rolling through a downward spiral. I felt lonely and empty. I let schoolwork consume me, lost myself fall in between everyone else's problems, and didn't know how to speak up about how I felt. It took a very close friend of mine to force me to talk it out, and everything bad was purged from me in the form of word vomit. That day I realized that I had no reason to be ashamed of how I felt, and made the decision to step back into the light. I have never felt better, or more alive than I do now, doing what I love with confidence and investing myself into the people I love.
Now, hope and optimism are so important to me, and I would gladly give up a night of studying to listen to a friend who was hurting. Or even to just get closer to someone I didn't really know, just by talking to them, letting the conversation find its way in and out of us. I do have my days though, when I wake up and feel like my old self. Since I was a junior in high school, I kept two PostSecret cards on my locker/wall, to remind myself that life is good--always. The two cards I had up have so much significance to me, and I never told anyone why I always wanted to look at them every day.
My dresser in Jameson--the red and yellow card is from the first PostSecret event I saw at Monmouth U. That shiny card on the left inside my dresser is one secret. The shiny card on the right near my wall is the other secret I always carry with me.
It always is.
I always have this kind of faith.
Challenging myself and taking chances with no regrests. <3
Frank was nice enough to stay around and sign everyone's book and take pictures with us.
Something that struck me as so incredibly amazing was when Frank spoke of he sometimes thinks about all the bad stuff that happened in his life, and that if he had the chance to redo his life, he wouldn't because they are connected to the parts of his life he feels best about. He realizes he's grown from the struggles he encountered. So many secrets communicate stories of healing. It's easy to feel so lost at a place like Rutgers, but it is also comforting to know that there are people who are always willing to wait for you and help you. There are so many communities within such a huge school that support each other and don't want you to feel lost or alone.
Whatever your story or secret is, the world wants to hear it. The world needs to hear your voice. Don't be afraid to reach out to the people around you when you need them, and have faith in the kind of conversations that can change lives.
We're listening.
Location: SinglePost