We Convince Ourselves of an Open Secret

We go from one to the next. We convince ourselves we are impervious. We can shuffle from one to another without one affecting the other. We convince ourselves they exist in a vacuum. That they exist in the confines of the shift. We convince ourselves of so many falsities. 

We convince ourselves of impossible dilutions. That the outbursts of anger are isolated. That the frustration is exclusively caused by what lies before us and not the preceding events. The limp body of a child killed. The broken-down driver. The repetitive images of domestic violence. The simple questions. The family notifications. The angry citizen seeking to summon the government to settle their personal vendettas. The mundane to the catastrophic without moments of transition. 

We convince ourselves we can exist in such bi-polars without consequences. As if always looking over one’s shoulder is normal. As if everyone examines every statement of others with unwavering skepticism. We convince ourselves the lack of sleep, food, and time are without natural consequences.  We live in our self-created dilutions. We turn a blind eye to the obvious consequences. The anger, the frustration, the stumbling words, the inability to think, the inability to sleep. We compensate for every symptom. The caffeine, the alcohol, the medications, the isolation. We take action to overcome the screams from our mind, body, and soul while creating the cognitive dissonance. 

We convince ourselves of self-destructive delusions. We convince ourselves of an open secret. We look upon the honest with discomfort. Our words betray what we know. We compensate to avoid the painful truth. We know the honest are honest while simultaneously perpetuating the lie. We provide derogatory labels for the honest to preserve the façade of the open secret. We signal to others that the honest are to be untrusted. 

Every dilution yet another shovel full of dirt. We convince ourselves even though we know it is destroying us. We maintain the façade as it destroys our marriages, our friendships, our health, and our minds. Our last breathes often the haunting honesty spoken by those of the past. The perpetual cycle of the open secret known for generations. The perpetual cycle of lying and lying until we prematurely lie forever. 

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on April 25, 2024.

Jake Smith is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.