As a kid there was a tiny little me and she lived inside my belly and her name was Margaret. In my imagination I gave her an overstuffed armchair and a plush throw rug, a TV in the corner with all of the forbidden programming and a refrigerator full of candy and sugared soda. I talked to her daily, and I brought her my secrets like gifts in my grubby hands.

I never cried in front of other kids. I refused to show that weakness, to present as anything less than perfect. From the ages of six to about nine I had a group of friends who were a bit cruel, and since I was more than a bit sensitive I had plenty of emotion to quash. It became a full time job. Absorb the blows with a full-on grin intact. Blink rapidly or fake a cough or sneeze to keep the tears at bay. Hang tight until it’s finally time to run home, fall up those stairs on hands and knees, dive into my bedroom and emotionally vomit. Watch through bleary eyes the pink gauze of a curtain as it takes a sudden breath, then shudders still again in the vacuum of the slamming door.

Children grow into adults and imaginary friends shrink to nothingness. Maybe Margaret stomped off in a huff those years I discovered diary writing. Maybe she was absorbed in the contents of my stomach, obliterated by its acid. Perhaps she was drown with years of drink, or wasted away with her keeper during the time of starvation. Maybe she was crushed beneath the weight of her burden. All I know is she is no longer there, and I am a 33-year-old woman with a vacancy.

That doesn’t mean I ever stopped retreating inside myself, and I have never before seen it as a bad thing. I’ve nurtured it, maybe even fed it Little Shop of Horrors-style, a longing for solitude that came alive, grew larger than me; one that was rarely sated. But there are enough years under my belt now to warrant a loosening, my bloated belly of experience too swollen to ignore. I’m beginning to believe that I keep too much inside, and I’m starting to wonder if it will turn on me, consume me back, these words. All of this time I’ve seen my solitude as a coping mechanism, but now I see I haven’t been dealing at all. I’ve been procrastinating.

This is heavy on my mind now because I am sorting a few things out, and in the process it has been gently suggested to me by a friend that I have no outlet, that I never have. I thought it was writing, it should be writing, but between this blog and my deadlines I never just write, like my professional gardening friends who won’t touch dirt after hours. I see now that I must. I need to revisit those junior high and high school days when I wrote in my notebooks with abandon. I need to write volumes that no one but me will ever see, and that needs to be enough. It doesn’t have to take away from anything else I’m doing, it just needs to be a priority. A daily ritual.

I didn’t know. How could I have not known? The only thing I’ve known, and I’ve known it for a very long time, is that I am a secret keeper. I am wrapped as tightly as an onion and it would take years to peel my reluctant layers. I have to let things out. I have to put them on paper without fear, without a smidgen of self-consciousness. I don’t necessarily have to trust other human beings with the contents, but I have to trust the Universe. I have to trust that she will hold my gifts as gently as my own tired skeleton has all of these years, and I have to do it soon, now, before my ribs crack.