Purim (and dirty little secrets)!!!!!

This weekend is Purim, one of the big celebration holidays on the Jewish calendar. The best part of the holiday is that you are supposed to drink until you can’t tell the difference between the good guy of the story (Mordechai) and the bad guy (Haman).

Seriously, proscribed drunkenness!!!

Anyway, it’s a long story and it can all be read here but I’m going to give you my take on Purim as it relates to me right now.

There are two women in the Purim story. One is Vashti and the other is Esther. For the story to work, we must get rid of Vashti in the beginning so that Esther can become queen and the heroine of the story. Therefore, Vashti needs to be the villain but really, she isn’t. She decides that she doesn’t want to parade around for the king’s drunken buddies in nothing but her tiara and so, off with her head.

Great.

Then to Esther. Esther becomes the queen, but she has many secrets.

Many, many secrets.

Secrets which could have her killed. She frets over this. She fasts (because that’s what they did in the olden days when they had a decision to make – apparently) and she finally decides that to save herself and to save the Jewish people, she will have to put her life at risk, and tell her secrets to the king.

I lived a lot of my life with big secrets and a lot of shame. I was protecting myself at the time, but over time, it caused me to curl up in a ball and not get out of bed for a year, not to mention the crying and the driving into brick walls.

Aaaanyway....

As I started getting better, I started telling certain, trusted people my secrets. I risked a lot to do this. They might have rejected me. They might have said something stupid – and some did. But ultimately, getting those secrets off my chest (and stomach and thighs and heart) has been such an incredibly healing process.

Secrets suck. Even the really shameful ones that make you feel like a bad person inside.

We all want to look unblemished. Some of us (ME!) want to look/seem perfect but that just is a big ol' lie and makes everyone wonder what you're hiding (don't drink, don't smoke, what do ya do?) and the cracks in your veneer that will eventually come out seem all that more glaring.

I'm a mess. Glad to share it with ya. And in the end, Esther tells her secret, saves herself, the Jewish people and gets the bad guy (Haman) hung on the gallows.

The End.

The moral of this story is that when you share a terrible secret that has been burdening your soul and making you eat a loaf of bread and a dozen tortillas a day and you get it off your chest it becomes less and less shameful. It weighs less and becomes easier to manage. Perhaps someone will say, "I'm so sorry, I didn't know." or "That happened to me, too." And you realize that you're not the only one with a terrible secret.

Have a hamentaschen for me!!!!