Secret lives

June 2012.  This is not an Afghanistan piece.  It is a new piece.  I don't know what it means.

We all have two lives.  Our real life and our secret life.

In our real life we are what we appear to be.  We love those we are with, we care for those around us.  Every day we do what we must to oil the wheels of the machine on which we grind out our existence.  We buy, we sell, we present, we minute. We laugh, dutifully,  at our employers pathetic jokes, when inside we choke on the bile of hypocrisy.  We share pleasantries with people we would not share our air with if we had the choice.  In our real life we seize pleasure when we can, jealously grasping it, unconsciously clutching it, stretching it out.  We crave pleasure, and when we achieve it we cling to it hungrily, like a thief grasps his objective.  But such pleasures are illusory, transitory, fleeting.  The pain you experience when the rain lashes against your face, making you feel alive  The joy you feel at seeing children play. The memories evoked by the sounds and smells of your own childhood, long forgotten, briefly remembered.  Like the smile on your face when the sun kisses it, these things fade, leaving behind a growing coldness.  We return to our office, our home, our family and we feel less happy than we were, unable to shake off the insidious sense that we are missing something, that there is supposed to be more to life than this.

And then the darkness comes, and we are enveloped by it, the layers of our secret life and our real life lying like lovers,  one upon the other, the edges of each blurring, until the secret life rushes in.

It is only in our secret life that we are truly ourselves.

In our secret life we are brave. In our secret life we are strong, we know no fear and we suffer no loneliness.  In our secret life we followed the path we dared not tread in our real life.  We lead the existence we were meant to lead, the one denied to us by our parents, by our husbands, by our wives, by our real life.  We lead the life free from the incessant demands of our children and the unrelenting requirements of our employers.  In our secret life there are no consequences to our actions, at least none we can't control.  The pretty woman across the bar, with the shirt unbuttoned just one too many, revealing flawless skin, is ours to pluck.   Unsullied, supple, welcoming.  The antagonist we fear offending is ours to punish, no regret at pain inflicted, no remorse at humiliation inflicted.  Years of suffering and torment erased in a flurry of fists and blood.  All who have offended, belittled, doubted, prevented us from achieving all we were meant to achieve, punished in a cathartic, frenzied fury.

Then we wake.  Alone with ourselves.  Real life.