LitWit Challenge 2.5: Confessions, revelations, and other monsters in your dungeons
For this week’s LitWit Challenge we’re giving away a hardcover copy of PostSecret, extraordinary confessions from ordinary lives, compiled by Frank Warren.
Warren handed out 3,000 postcards inviting people to share their secrets for a group art project. The secret could be “a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything—as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before.”
The contributions, all anonymous, were collected and shown at art galleries then compiled into this fascinating book.
PostSecret is sad, funny, disturbing, and ultimately liberating—there’s nothing like getting rid of baggage you’ve been trundling around in your head for years and years. This book reminds us that humans are more like each other than we care to think or admit.
As this is supposed to be a time for reflection, LitWit Challenge 2.5 should be therapeutic. We do like to hang on to our secrets, don’t we, letting them fester in our psyche, and for what?
So tell us something about you that you’ve never told anyone before. It doesn’t have to be earth-shaking, it just has to be true. Let it go, you’ll feel better afterwards.
Post your secret/confession/revelation in Comments. If you’re worried about anonymity, edit the details in your user profile. If you’re worried about being judged by other readers, don’t—we won’t allow comments on other people’s secrets.
On Sunday all the entries will be included in a raffle; the winner gets the book. We’ll accept entries until 12 noon on Sunday, 4 April 2010.
The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore. Do you have something to tell us?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
April 1st, 2010 at 12:40
I don’t believe in god.
April 1st, 2010 at 14:19
I didn’t wash my hands when I shook a friend’s hand, and I had just dissected a dead woman. Part of my gloves was torn.
April 1st, 2010 at 14:33
I have always wanted to make out with my geeky, 40-year-old chemistry college professor.
April 1st, 2010 at 15:19
Everytime I’m at an uncle’s house I make it a point to look at their porn stash, and never forget to get a CD before I go.
April 1st, 2010 at 15:33
I’m almost twenty but I still squat whenever I take a dump.
April 1st, 2010 at 16:43
I’m afraid of being alone in the dark.
April 1st, 2010 at 18:58
Whenever I feel depressed because my career is going nowhere, I watch poverty porn on youtube. You know, the documentaries from the local channels. Nothing like watching other people’s more miserable lives to put things in perspective.
April 1st, 2010 at 19:24
I hate our priest
April 1st, 2010 at 21:15
I’m almost thirty and I still squat on the floor when I urinate.
April 1st, 2010 at 21:35
Still in love with the same person for 4 years already. And she’s one of my closest friends.
April 1st, 2010 at 21:56
I’m sick to death of my ex-boyfriend’s wife but I always end up stalking her on social networking sites for one reason – I want to believe I’m not a loser.
April 1st, 2010 at 22:03
Deleted upon sender’s request
April 1st, 2010 at 22:20
When I was in 4th yr HS, me and my friend stole an English Textbook from the bookshelf to pass it for the clearance.
I asked my friend if our classmates would not suspect us of stealing their textbook since we were the last one to leave the room because we were the assigned “cleaners” for the day.
She said: “Of course not, they wouldn’t dare since we belong to the Top Five”
I said: “Oh yeah, we’re supposed to be the good students”
While leaving the classroom, we let out our sinister laugh.
The next day, we were never caught.
Our classmate whom we have stolen the textbook from, never suspected us.
April 1st, 2010 at 22:27
I think I have not completely let go of an ex boyfriend. He is coming back from abroad and I’m afraid I’d be cheating on my boyfriend again.
April 1st, 2010 at 22:41
When I was in gradeschool, I sneaked out the only copy of Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock in our school library and read it at home. I brought it back the next day.
April 1st, 2010 at 23:39
I give silent yet potent fart in a crowded LRT just so people will move faster.
April 2nd, 2010 at 01:13
I’ve developed the habit of answering dumb questions in my mind. I sometimes think I’ve expressed my answer but find out otherwise when the other person repeats his or her question with a look that says, “Is this guy dumb?”
April 2nd, 2010 at 02:28
I never told my bestfriend that we had the same guy crush eventhough it breaks my heart hearing her tell me stories about him.
April 2nd, 2010 at 02:52
when i was a kid we never had enough money to buy more than the necessities, and sometimes we didn’t even have enough for that. my father was a tricycle driver and my mother an esteemed chief accountant, and i was embarrassed when at the private exclusive school they sent me and my siblings to the teacher would ask, what do your parents do for a living. one day my father took us to the mall, and i stole a pretty pink keychain. i didn’t need it, not like how i thought i needed the pocketbooks i lifted from the bookstore. i just wanted something pretty, something that would be seen as a status symbol maybe, since all the girls at school had these trinkets that say just how blessed they are, how they have money to buy the unnecessary. i was caught. they let me go because i was too young, i was 11. my father was so disappointed, and he asked me if i wanted to tell my mother, i shook my head, and he told me not to do it again. i never again did, and i never felt more ashamed in my whole life.
April 2nd, 2010 at 03:06
At Kuya Alex’s house I was really drunk. I went to the CR and peed… at his shampoo bottle. I shook the bottle so he won’t notice if ever he used it. He’s now running for councilor at our city.
April 2nd, 2010 at 03:37
i was sexually abused when i was 9 or 10 years old, and up to now, my family doesn’t know anything about it. i wish i could tell them, but i don’t have the heart to do it. I’ll be turning 30 this year.
April 2nd, 2010 at 05:53
I survived elementary without anyone ever knowing that my i cut my socks open near the toes because they make me feel tensed and uncomfortable.
April 2nd, 2010 at 07:04
I erased the data on his disks by running a magnet over them, one by one.
April 2nd, 2010 at 07:14
I hate my life. And everyone else seems to think otherwise.
April 2nd, 2010 at 07:37
I remember coming down with a sore throat when I was five. That day my parents had to go somewhere and left me alone with the maid.
Later she came into my room with a little plastic jar of Vicks Vapor Rub and a spoon. She was adamant that I swallow the stuff because the instructions say that it had to be applied “in” the throat.
I flat out refused because I figured it would taste awful. I was almost poisoned because the household help confused her prepositions.
April 2nd, 2010 at 09:50
I don’t take a bath on a Saturday. It just became a habit.
April 2nd, 2010 at 10:25
Back in high school I met up with a ‘cyber’ boy and we made out behind a monument at some University campus. My first and only boyfriend of four years doesn’t know that he isn’t my first kiss.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:24
When I was just sophomore in college, I was raped in the library. (I’m not really sure it was rape. I was a minor, 17.) He grabbed me by the crotch, he started massaging it. It felt good (but afterward and even now, I feel awful.) I gave in, and let him have his way with me. That was my first sex, and it was with a man. No petting, nothing, just a blow job.
I shake off the feeling of guilt, telling myself it was JUST a blow job. But I know it had changed me somehow, the way I think of sex. I feel a degree perverted. It was almost five years, since then. I never told my parents, I never told my friends.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:59
I ffc
April 2nd, 2010 at 12:14
In high school I had to rush home after I peed in my pants because I didn’t know where the bathroom was.
When I started working already, it happened again while waiting for a cab in South Superhighway.
April 2nd, 2010 at 12:37
im always afraid of driving alone. its like i want to drive my car off the road. and just let go.
April 2nd, 2010 at 13:23
It was 2am during my Surgery rotation and, after working non-stop since 6am and with 16 more hours to go, I was at the interns’ quarters trying to get a 30-min (or, if I was lucky, 1-hr) nap. Just as I was starting to dream of getting massaged by Angelina Jolie’s thick lips, got called down to the CCU stat, which just means one of our breast CA patients was having a cardiac arrest. That meant running down 5 flights of stairs to try to perform CPR on an almost dead person. Repeat that scene 4 times within 2 hours, including having to trudge up the same stairs to get back to the quarters only to get called back again shortly. Exhausting doesn’t quite describe it. And it was all because the family wouldn’t let go until their doctor arrived. All the way from Bulacan to QC. Yeah. I had never really, truthfully wished for somebody to die…permanently that is…until then.
During another rotation, got called again for the same reason, but really it was too late because the body was already in near-rigor-mortis before we tried to do CPR. LOL! It was the cancer ward and he was emaciated, too. I could feel the ribs cracking under my palms while I attempted to pump his probably curdled blood. Anyway, since the patient had no family around (the reason nobody was alerted soon enough; the patient was probably monitored by nurses every 4 hours as it was a regular ward), my resident decided it was our chance to practice endotracheal intubation. And so went my first intubation! Yay. I admit it wasn’t much of a challenge, though, since the patient was dead and stiff and was in no way capable of being combative and all.
April 2nd, 2010 at 14:45
When I was in Grade 4, I stabbed a girl with a blue Apache ballpen in the upper arm. All because she didn’t want to give me the ballpen’s cover and my sundo was already there.
I still think she deserves it.
April 2nd, 2010 at 15:02
I am a big fan of Jolina.
April 2nd, 2010 at 15:35
i frequently visit this site so i will look COOL.
April 2nd, 2010 at 15:50
Back in the 3rd grade, I stole 30 pesos (as in 30 pieces of one peso) in our little store in exchange for an Andres Bonifacio book some agreeable guy offers us in school. My mom haven’t the slightest idea about it until now and believe it or not, I still feel guilty about it.
April 2nd, 2010 at 16:23
When I was a kid, I saw this black-and-white movie where a woman who looks like Amalia Fuentes gets stabbed repeatedly in the heart.
I had visions of doing the same thing to our neighbor Lea, a small girl who’s bawling and yelping drove me up the wall.
April 2nd, 2010 at 16:24
A woman fell in love with me thinking I was a man.
April 2nd, 2010 at 16:48
three years ago, i told this guy that i was the same age as he was because i didn’t want to miss out dating him just because i was really 4 years older. he is now my husband, we are having a baby in June, and he still thinks we’re the same age.
April 2nd, 2010 at 17:15
When I go on duty, everything shifts to busy mode. Patients flock in, and the hospital is converted to a marketplace. Nurses almost always complain because they are busy when I am on duty.
Being assigned in the Ob-Surgery Departments, I answer calls from the ER, the Delivery Room, the Labor Room, and the Operating Room, aside of course from ward calls.
One time I was busy admitting patients at the ER when I was called to the Operating Room to assist in a Emergency Cesarean Section. I immediately ran to the OR and changed. When I went to the sink to scrub,there were no more sterile brushes. The nurse told me they ran out of it. When I glanced at the Operating Theater, the surgeon was already there, and the anesthesiologist was already inducting anesthesia on the gravid patient who was screaming because of pain caused by her uterine contractions. I had no choice but wet my hands extending to the elbows, with water and bathe it in a lot of betadine antiseptic solution, then rinse it with water. I repeated the “modified scrubbing procedure” twice then proceeded to assist in the said major operations. Good that the patient went home well without any signs of infection in her surgical wound.
When I was in college, I was part of the university paper. We would also publish university magazines twice a year. One issue had an article that featured the Tiempos – Ma’am Edith Tiempo and her late husband Edilberto Tiempo. We needed a picture of them ASAP.
I was running out of time, and I remembered, I saw a picture of them in one of the magazines in the periodical section in the library. So off I went to the library, borrowed the magazine from the student assistant. Mags are not to be taken out of the library. So I sat on a chair browsed through the pages to check it was the magazine I needed and pretended to read it. After a few minutes, making sure that the student assistant was not looking, I went to the Restroom, got inside one of the cubicles and tore the page with the picture of the Tiempos in it. Then I returned the magazine got my ID back and went out of the library. My editor was elated to have the picture, he did not even bother to ask how I got it. :-)
April 2nd, 2010 at 17:33
I was sexually abused by my uncle when I was 12 year old boy.
That’s not the secret though.
The secret is, a part of me feels I deserved and enjoyed it. I still dream of him and I feel bad for feeling this way until now
April 2nd, 2010 at 18:30
When I was seven, my mom let our three housemaids borrow our full length mirror. We were going on vacation and our rooms were going to be locked so she let them take it to their room.
Three weeks later, we came back. The three housemaids dutifully cooked us lunch and unpacked our bags. I was so tired from the four-hour bus trip that I lay down on the first bed I saw. I lay on something stiff and I heard a crack. It was the full-length mirror! I immediately got off and slept on another bed.
That evening, my mother noticed the mirror and inspected it. She went berserk. She called the three housemaids who tearfully explained that they were very careful with it. She told them to replace it. And so they did.
I never told anyone that I did it.
April 2nd, 2010 at 19:15
My yaya liked joining noontime TV contests (it was Del Monte Kitchenomics), I wrote the letters/contest entries for her.
April 2nd, 2010 at 19:37
I’ve had a fetish for gay porn/literature since I was a teen, and I’m afraid my parents know about it.
April 2nd, 2010 at 20:20
I am still strangely in love with my ex even though im currently living in with my new girlfriend. we still go out and drink, and eventually have sex. I can’t go back with my ex though, i hate her child. im a lying cheating bastard.
April 2nd, 2010 at 20:32
I buy my 5 year old son toys I really want for myself. Now he got Star Wars collection that is vanishing piece by piece without him noticing it and they’re setting up camp in our attic when nobody’s around but me.
April 2nd, 2010 at 22:23
When I was 11 years old, no one noticed that I took a 50 peso bill from that collection thingie they pass around during Mass.
April 2nd, 2010 at 23:34
I have some friends whom I like to de-friend now that I know who they really are.
April 2nd, 2010 at 23:59
Though I like writing by hand now, I hated the repetitive exercises the school made me do between kindergarten and fourth grade and so I delegated the homework to my grandfather’s caregiver (she liked the exercises).
April 3rd, 2010 at 13:15
i have a thing for men in cassocks – priests, seminarians, etc. i just like looking at their vestments flow with their gait.
April 3rd, 2010 at 13:17
i’m looking for a job in a foriegn country and i’m staying with a friend who has been there for me since high school, who has been my sister, adviser, room mate for almost 9 years.
i want to cut her out of my life.
April 3rd, 2010 at 13:45
My lolo owned this bakery, and they had this barn of a room where they kept left over pandesal. Save for the light that pours in whenever it’s one door is opened, this room was almost always dark. And hot. And the smell of old bread is just overpowering, its a total assault. The panaderos kept this room closed until they have to use it, in the early afternoon, for storing the business excess of the day.
It was in this room where I had my first kiss, tongue and all. And I can still remember the faint smell his tongue, on top of that of molding bread, as it slipped from between my lips. I know my cousin wouldn’t mind this disclosure. He doesn’t know you, let alone your blog. But he knows that we locked tongues more than twice in that barn of a room.
Things like that would have given me an instant erection if it happened now, but I was a kid when those episodes happened. I was around ten, then. I didn’t know shit. But I know I liked it.
April 3rd, 2010 at 13:49
This, so far, is the best list of comments I’ve ever read in your blog, Ms. Zafra. Was it the ease of the challenge? Was it the book? Was it the opportunity for disclosure? I wouldn’t know, but I really like this challenge.
April 3rd, 2010 at 14:00
And also, I borrowed these two books from the City Library when I was in second year high school. Yes, we still had a City Library then. They mailed me my Library Card, and I used it the first chance I got.
I’m nearing thirty now, and I haven’t returned any of those books yet. And I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t even want to try remembering.
April 3rd, 2010 at 14:39
I’m still a virgin but I gave head to more than 40 men since high school.
April 3rd, 2010 at 14:45
My best friend of nearly twenty years won’t hang out with me anymore because I don’t have a car. I still consider her my best friend. She was the only one there for me when I most needed a friend.
April 3rd, 2010 at 20:18
I still carry on until today (sometimes) this practice since childhood – Holding my shit from coming out as long as I can everytime this call of nature takes place. Maybe because I am too lazy to go to the bathroom. Because of this, sometimes, I put dirt on my undies.
April 3rd, 2010 at 20:36
I hate studying because whenever I get a perfect score my classmates and teachers would find some absurd reason to deduct my score. And when they can’t find any reason they’ll say I cheated even when my seat mates got poor scores.
April 3rd, 2010 at 20:52
I caught my Mom masturbating. She thought I did not see, but I did. I wish I never did.
April 3rd, 2010 at 22:36
i graduated last year and i’m currently on my first job. as a product of a science high school and a state university, i was convinced that i was meant to do something great and relevant. now i’m scared because i have no idea where i go from here and what i’m supposed to do with all the stuff i learned in school.
April 3rd, 2010 at 23:08
I hate my religion. I don’t believe in what they believe in anymore. I just stick around because my crush is there. And basically, all my friends are there.
April 4th, 2010 at 07:31
I had steamy make out sessions and almost had sex with my cousin. When I was 5.
April 4th, 2010 at 09:34
I lost my virginity to my best friend’s youngest brother, who is also three years younger than me. She has no idea to this day.
April 4th, 2010 at 10:28
When my mom died in 2005, i wanted to write something beautiful then slip the paper inside her coffin so she would have something of me when she is cremated. But I never got to write anything. I didn’t write because I hate her for saying she wanted to die, that she’ll be relieved and free of all hardship with her daughters if she did, because my dad is dead too and neither of them will see me get married or have children or buy a new sofa for them, or do anything. I couldn’t think of anything beautiful to say.
The urn with her ashes sits in our living room to this day. I hate that there’s no part of me inside it. Sometimes i dream that i’m clawing my way inside it and just hiding there.
April 5th, 2010 at 17:34
TO Ate Rebecca (my cousin’s nanny back in the 90′s) I stole your Php 500 which you hide under your bedsheets because I wanted to buy Ovalteenies down the street. It’s been 15 years and I really want to hand this money back!