epiphaning

(originally posted 3/11/2021)

She had an epiphany, which for her was not in the least bit unusual. She was epiphaning all the time. Her life was littered with them. What was unusual was that her epiphany was followed by a realization. Realizations were always in short supply.

The epiphany was that she had over a dozen secrets. Deep blue secrets. Quite a shock when she totaled them all up.

The realization was that to have a secret you needed people who would care about that secret. At the present time she had nobody who would care either way about any of them.

Quite a revelation; that she had a lot of secrets and none at all.

What wasn’t a secret is how she lost the people in her life. She wasn’t sure if this was ironic. Mostly because despite using the word frequently, she wasn’t exactly sure what it meant.

She kept too many secrets to keep the people that cared about her in her life. Family. Friends. Love interests. Eventually they all left her. Perhaps left isn’t the right word. Shed her? Everyone has secrets and it frustrated her to no end that hers were apparently not the kind that stayed secret. While they never openly made themselves known, they hovered over and colored everything. They oozed out unbidden. In everything she said and everything she didn’t say. In everything she did and everything she didn’t. If she so much as painted a vase full of flowers there they were. Adding real petals around the border just seems to make it worse.

She wondered where in her brain these epiphanies set up shop. Was it anywhere near where the secrets were stored? She read that the brain has two distinct consciousnesses residing within it (in addition to a number of sub-personalities); Order and Chaos. Left brain and right brain. Sometimes late at night she eavesdrops on a heart in conflict with itself.

All of this leading her to wonder if epiphanies and secrets ever bump into each other while moving back and forth down the various corridors. And if they do, what their relationship is like.

Do they converse or simply give each other sideways glances?

She did not know.

One more secret to add to the tally.

Waiting for her neXt epiphany.

“I think, consciously or not, what we readers do each time we open a book is to set off a search for authenticity. We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or, sometimes, profound epiphanies.”

-Maureen Corrigan