Deepest Darkest Secret

Today I’m sharing with you one of my deepest, darkest secrets. Please keep this between us because looking back at it now through the crisp, clear, polarized lens of adulthood, it’s kinda embarrassing how dumb I was when I was younger.

In my defense, though, it wasn’t my fault. I was but a young, skinny, knobby-kneed child, with unruly hair, and a cute dimple in my right cheek, the face one, not the butt one.

I didn’t know any better. I couldn’t have. My worldview was limited to Sesame Street and Mr. Dressup. I didn’t have the Google™ to teach me things. There were no magic devices with access to all the knowledge in the world tucked into my OshKosh B’gosh™ jumpers. The iPad™ was nothing more than four left over Scrabble™ tiles dejectedly sitting on the rail, waiting to be played one or two at a time, an overlooked anagram for paid, which Apple™ is certainly getting.

Anyway, when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I remember finding out that the sun, the centre of our universe, had already been burning strong for a few billion years. And would most certainly burn out in a few billion more, and humanity as we knew it would cease to exist on Earth.

While I didn’t know what that meant exactly, I knew it had something to do with death and dying. And it meant all of us. No one would be spared. Even my goldfish, whose name I can no longer remember but who was my favourite. 

I never told anyone this. It was my deepest darkest secret, as though saying the words out loud would make it happen. Or make it happen faster. Or make it real. To me. And to those around me, who seemed blissfully unaware of our untimely, impending demise. 

And for years that made me sad inside because I hadn’t met you yet, and I wasn’t ready to die before we connected.