“I’m inspired by your courage to be the real you, William, and so I’m taking you up on your challenge. To be real. What I wanted was an adventure for you, but you seem to be the one sending me on my own tasks, asking the very questions I’ve been avoiding. This might just be a dare that you regret, but I’m taking the risk. It’s all because of you.”
I read this paragraph again slowly, out loud to my truck. I feel like my secret person has become something different. They are not the all-knowing, powerful creator of tasks in their realm of mystery, but they are just as driven by the adventure as I am, enrobed in the mystery of what the next task will bring for both of us. I’m moved by my part in this exchange, like I’ve created something unexpected for my secret person, too. My worldview shifts.
“Have you ever had something perfect, but wished it could be more? But the consequence of elevating it could be losing it all? That’s where I am. Afraid to lose everything if I take action,afraid it can all disappear if I do nothing. Scared a little. I feel like most people see me as a no-regrets person. Not like I’m impulsive or reckless, but I hold moments against their value all the time, so I think people would be surprised that, inwardly, I’m tentative and apprehensive about some moments. It’s something inside I haven’t really shared with anyone, because the sharing might just be the action that could be the end of all that is perfect. And so I hold that fear internally. Until you. The courage you’ve demonstrated in being you makes me want to overcome. I want to share that with you for some reason.”
I really thought when I got the journal back, whatever was written here would flip me into forensics mode, like I would analyze handwriting and fingerprints and details to try to work out the identity of my secret person, but I am wrong. I don’t care who this person is, whether I know them in real life or not, or who they might be. I just feel connected, like we fit together in our strange anonymous way, like we can share something important because we’re the only two people who have this notebook. I find myself just breathing it in. I’m not trying to fix it for them, or figure it out, or over-analyze things. I just feel warm inside knowing that we share this part of our lives together.
For several pages, my secret person pours their heart onto the page and I get a glimpse of how the scavenger hunt is changing us. Both of us. It started out as something simple: send me on a few tasks for fun. Then, as the tasks have changed, I’ve set myself up to overcome personal challenges to become the truest me possible. And so have they. In a way, we’ve done this together. But separately.
Ironically, the force that drives us both seems to be the anonymity of our secret relationship. It’s like a place we both feel safe to be ourselves. I’ve never felt more like myself and I don’t want it to stop.
I find myself rubbing my hand over the words, feeling the heart of each syllable in my fingertips, the messy blue scrawl pulsing through my nerve endings until they make their way to my core.
The entry ends with more dead-drop instructions, this time the lost-and-found at the coffee shop where I got my first flat white clue, and a request to relate my experience at being a kid again in the next journal entry.
I drive home with the notebook open in the passenger seat, so I can steal a re-read at stoplights or straightaways, and I plop myself down at the dining table for one last read before grabbing my pen and diving into my story.
Where to start this time? I feel like we’re an a new plane.
The welts on my back sting again in a good way as I replay the events of the park in my head. I find myself smiling so hard it hurts, and laughing in spite of myself. Two grown men playing in the park, shoes flying, sockless sprinting, ammo gathering, and grassy wrestling. I can still feel the thick muscles of Martin’s back against my fingers, the squeeze of his thighs against my core, the electricity of his arm in my side. The memory resides in my body and travels up my spine in a way I can’t express. Or shouldn’t, I guess, in a letter written to my secret person. Or even to myself, for that matter.
I decide to just word-dump again, writing unfiltered, unedited and see where it takes me.
My scrawling brings me to this conclusion: At first glance, I thought the task was going to be about my “inner-child”, and then I discovered that being a kid again is about being unguarded. I was shocked to discover how quickly I didn’t care what other people thought of me and my silly game. I was free in a way I haven’t ever been, even as a kid, maybe. I thought itwould be nostalgic but instead, it became about letting myself be me, without care of what everyone thought.
When Martin stumbled into the trajectory of my shoe, I didn’t think twice about inviting him to play. I didn’t attempt to hide my silly game, or explain it away, I just wanted him to join me. I wanted him to be a part of it. Which he did. And Martin’s unfiltered participation and willingness to meet me where I was, amplified the fun because it was shared. What sticks with me from this day is the breathless laughter, the shared soreness, and adrenaline that came with being so free as a kid. No analysis. No over-thinking.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but you should try it!” I write. “Maybe you already have, but going to the park has affected me in a way that I can’t fully understand or describe, but I feel free. Like I found me again in some real way.”
I stare at the page in front of me, then mindlessly flip through the leaves of handwritten text. What I have in front of me is not unfiltered. I’ve filtered out Martin. Sure, I’ve mentioned him and the fun we had at the park, but it feels like I’m afraid to include Martin to the fullest, like somehow my secret person won’t understand the friendship we have. Like it’s something to hide. I reach my arm instinctively around the back of my shoulder, rubbing the spot that still smarts a little from the sweetgum-ball attack. My body remembers the sting of the impact and the soothing warmth of Martin’s fingers, the twitch of my muscle beneath his touch. Can one’s mind actually smile, I mean like a big, fat, face-stretching smile only in your subconscious. I think that’s what’s happening to me. But my actual face refuses to smile. I’m torn by the fact that I can’t fit these parts of my life together.
But then something strange and warm and maybe brave triggers in my core and I return to the place in the journal I leftoff. I grab my pen and commit: “Can I be frank with you?” I start.
And then what appears on the page shocks me a little. I’m telling my secret person about past relationships. About my ex, Sabrina. I’m not sure why, but I don’t overthink, I just word-dump.
Sabrina and I had been together for about five years. We lived together in northtown, in the apartment her parents had leased to her when she moved into town and opened her shop. I loved her. Well, I thought so at least. And then I called it quits. It was all me, the dumping, in a worse-than-cliche “it’s not you, it’s me” moment that was truer than anytime in it’s ever been said in all of history. I woke up one day and realized that she and I shared our lives mostly in logistics, like we were good friends, routine lovers, proper companions, and loyal family-figures for each other. But all of those things were richly grounded in the safety that came from knowing you had someone to call if your car broke down or were too sick to go to the pharmacy on your own. We were just two entities who shared and supported each other through our blind routine.
It was beautiful in a stale way. The security of it was nice. The lack of loneliness felt good. Having a plus-one waiting in the wings was always comforting. But I discovered that I hated it. It’s ironic actually, how much I wished for surprise and spontaneity and mystery, when those are things I actually feared. I liked the safety of routine. Well, at least I thought I did until I had a life built around it and a relationship that was surface-level perfect in every logistic. There was no passion or surprise or wonder. Just a perfectly shared life.
And I sort of snapped. I turned my life upside down, shocked her, and everyone I knew, with a break-up and a new life.
Except, it faltered like a New Years resolution. It was like I had bought that new gym membership, took some “before” pictures, dreamed big, and then totally reverted back to the safety and comfort of my routine. Only this time, on my own. Alone.
Not sad alone. Just lacking my default companion. And reminded daily that I may never have the wonder and the mystery. Or the surprise.
Except now, I’m surprising myself by sharing all of this with my secret person on this page.
I stare at the page I’ve written, half re-reading, half trying not to. My hand is trembling a little and my lips have become dry. I swipe them with my tongue for dear life.
“I haven’t shared this with my friends.” I write, “So I have no idea why I’m comfortable sharing this with you. But here it is. Several days ago I received an anonymous note from a secret person, and now I can’t contain myself, can’t stop surprising myself, can’t stop chasing that part of me that I hoped was there. I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you. Thank you for not being my default companion.”
I stare at the words I’ve written. My lips are burning. I can’t believe the person I am on paper. It feels like these words have been ghosting through my head and now have a permanent place in the universe.
Almost as if I’ve engraved them into the marble of my real life.
And all of this with someone I don’t even know.
I won’t undo it. I won’t unwrite this part of my life with my secret person. And that feeling scares me.
