replace your doors with vaults

A secret is always a door. Depending on the secret, the door is different. The materials correspond with the weight and consequence of the secret as if the door were to open. These doors don’t have the same lock or key but opening one will lead to another and another. Some doors are weak and have little reinforcement. Some doors are plywood and have a gap where the door meets the ground. Some are metal with a deadbolt after the initial lock. Some are glass. Screen doors, gates, safes, vault. It depends.

It’s important to remember all of the secrets you keep. Every single one needs to be cataloged and listed, filed in the cabinets of your mind. The worst thing is not to remember the implication and weight of your most guarded possessions. You also keep a list of who could know, who does know, and what could they do with it. This is crucial.

For a paranoid mind, this is all they think about. A constant whisper brushing their ear. Who knows, who could know, and what could they do with it. This is when to learn to make all your secrets vaults. No matter the gravity of each, all should be kept the same. In a vault with bolts and locks and traps. No one can know because lord know what they will do. Who could they tell? 

For a paranoid mind, all secrets are the same weight, the same consequence, the same unseen that must remain anonymous. But, maybe you’re not the paranoid mind, some advice for you: become paranoid. Start to think of every single, terrible and horrifying possibility of what your secret may hold. Make all your doors vaults and protect them with locks and bolts and traps because you don’t want to see the day your secret gets out. 

Dear Sane Secret Keepers, 

Don’t be.

Your sanity with your secrets will be your downfall. Your trust will be ripped to shreds all because of your naivety. It doesn’t matter if your secret is that you took a third candy from the candy jar. If anyone find out they would think you’re a thief. Then, anything that went missing would be pinned on you. Then, you would lose your friends. Then, your teachers wouldn’t trust you in their classroom. Then, you would get expelled because something big enough was lost and fingers would point to you, the person who took a third candy from the candy jar. 

Your life was ruined because you let that secret escape from its weak holding cell. See? See the consequences of that seemingly small secret? That’s why you have to forget your sanity, replace it with paranoia. Paranoia would’ve saved you from ruining your life. If you just embraced that paranoid mind you would’ve been in school with a good reputation, with friends and teachers who trusted you and no pointing fingers. 

But, no.

Your sane mind keeps letting secrets escape. So, if you really don’t want your life to be ruined because you were to naive and trusting that you believed your secrets were harmless, I ask you to think again. I ask you to replace your doors with vaults. 

With your secrets in mind— 

Love,

Your Paranoid Mind.