Secret Keys
My novel, Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, starts with a secret: when Richard Stone doesn’t come home from work one Monday afternoon, he is in the clutches of a full-blown mania, the first obvious indication that he suffers from Bipolar Disorder. His illness was not only a secret from his wife but also from himself.
Everyone has secrets. Think of the most recently publicized secret lives: Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, Chelsea Manning. These secret-keepers are famous (or infamous) because they are public figures. But what about the kindly great-uncle who used to squeeze you just a little too hard, sometimes in the wrong places? Or the ex-boyfriend who had a stash of child pornography on his computer? These examples have to do with sexuality, but there are other secrets that are part of daily life: drug abuse, alcoholism, an abusive spouse. And the most potent secrets of all are the secrets we keep from ourselves.
My novel-in-progress concerns the secrets we all keep. Over the next several weeks, I will explore secret lives in greater detail and consider what secrets do for us and to us.
To read more about Richard Stone’s Bipolar Disorder and the effects of that secret on his family, click on this link: Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate
Photo by StevenDepolo via Flickr
