It’s open enrollment season and I work in HR. Did I mention that my benefits coordinator left the company just before open enrollment got underway? Who can really blame her. I’ve taken the show on the road - - Ohio to be precise. Human resources can be a weird job. You’re the sentry to the data. The secrets. Parts of people they don’t want other people to know. That they’re less than amicably divorced. That they’re gay. That they struggle against anxiety and want to know what the co-pay will be for their anxiety medication. Oh, honey. Me too. They’re sick and scared. They’re dating someone 20 years their junior.
Outside of work, people compulsively tell me things. Placing the secret gently upon my lap, the heft of it shifted from them to me. In sobriety, the saying is, “You’re as sick as your secrets.” And, overall, I believe that to be true. Overall, because I am a BIG fan of boundaries, yo! Flag on the play or immediate oversharing. Or when plans are unfolding, the details still being delicately knit together like a fragile web.
Recently someone remarked of me on Facebook:
This is true. “Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.” – Oliver Goldsmith
I may tell you no fibs even if you don’t ask - - shifting the heft of my opinion from me, to you. Always honest, always real.
“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath