Speaker 1: High Family Secrets Family. As we prepare for the launch
Speaker 1: of our eighth season at the beginning of May, finally
Speaker 1: coming soon, I want to wet your appetite by sharing
Speaker 1: with you what feels like a sibling podcast to Family Secrets,
Speaker 1: created by the podcaster extraordinaire Nick vander Kolk, the Secrets Hotline.
Speaker 1: Nick has put together some examples of the anonymous recordings
Speaker 1: people leave on the Secrets Hotline, and I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that's most fascinating about this show is
Speaker 1: the huge range of what constitutes a secret. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy it and follow Nick's show, and I'll be
Speaker 1: back soon with a bit more bonus content and the
Speaker 1: all new season. Oh boy, this is going to be
Speaker 1: a weird probably not that weird. But I'm nineteen year
Speaker 1: years old, relatively Yeah, maybe I smoke a bit too much.
Speaker 1: Let me try this again. I'm a more or less
Speaker 1: run of the mill, mentally unstable nineteen year old. I
Speaker 1: recently bought myself a path of fire. I mean usually
Speaker 1: I I'm gonna try this again, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take a pause. Okay, Um, I'm nineteen relatively normal person,
Speaker 1: not shy at all. I tell my whole life story
Speaker 1: to anyone who wants to listen. I'm pretty much in
Speaker 1: a book, but I just bought a Path of Fire,
Speaker 1: and I'm concerned because I really like it. It makes
Speaker 1: me feel safe. I've been trying to think of for
Speaker 1: the last two days as I'm slowly admitting that I
Speaker 1: like this, if I can make it cool, like put
Speaker 1: spikes on it or something, and like make easy to
Speaker 1: pacifier my thing, because the more that I'm like at
Speaker 1: home alone, the more I keep using this pacifier. And
Speaker 1: I'm scared that, like I don't know, one day I'm
Speaker 1: gonna want it and people are gonna be like, like
Speaker 1: if I have a partner one day or someone seep
Speaker 1: do and they're gonna be like, what the fuck? And
Speaker 1: I but I just don't know how to make it
Speaker 1: part of my brand oo weird or that's the one
Speaker 1: thing in my life that I don't feel comfortable talk about.
Speaker 1: But here we are. Thanks so much for the show.
Speaker 1: Love you. Oh do not mean to say that, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry? Bye? Hi. My secret is that I secretly
Speaker 1: enjoy when the family members passed. It's not so much
Speaker 1: that I enjoy it, but I guess it's more like
Speaker 1: there's something cathartic in the anticipation and release of somebody
Speaker 1: close to me getting sick and then eventually going. I
Speaker 1: certainly feel sorrow when they do go, and I miss
Speaker 1: people and have empathy for my other loved ones who
Speaker 1: are also sad, But there's something absolutely irresistible to me
Speaker 1: about that anticipation and release. Like a few years ago,
Speaker 1: my mother in law got cancer and died over the
Speaker 1: course of a year, and I remember the entire time
Speaker 1: I was just sort of like thoroughly enjoyed the process
Speaker 1: of anticipating, you know, her eventual end, and then her
Speaker 1: going was this huge relief. It was almost a pleasurable experience.
Speaker 1: I actually looked back on that process fondly. I guess
Speaker 1: the more secretive part of this is her husband, my
Speaker 1: father WA, who I have kind of grown to dislike
Speaker 1: over the last few years, is slowly entering on his
Speaker 1: data failing. How I secretly kind of can't wait till
Speaker 1: he passes. Oh Hi, my name is, but don't tell anyone.
Speaker 1: My secret is that I think about death and dying
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot more than I think I talk
Speaker 1: about with other people. Something struck me as riding my
Speaker 1: bike and then it was like something plouched on my
Speaker 1: head and I just realized that I was gonna die,
Speaker 1: and then everyone around me was going to die, and
Speaker 1: all of us are going to die. We're all gonna die.
Speaker 1: It was unshakable. It was something that I couldn't get
Speaker 1: rid of that kept eating at me for a while,
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking about how doomed everyone is. It's
Speaker 1: easy to think that, particularly now these days. But then
Speaker 1: another why plumped in my head and it said, well,
Speaker 1: you're already born. It's too late. That totally changed everything,
Speaker 1: because it made it feel like death wasn't about losing something,
Speaker 1: but death was about participating in something like it was
Speaker 1: about connecting to your world. Dying with part of connecting
Speaker 1: to your world. And I think about that a lot,
Speaker 1: and it may seem it's really sad and really happy
Speaker 1: at the same time, because it's something we all have
Speaker 1: to do, and weirdly like it's a gift we give
Speaker 1: to our world. I don't think we should die, I
Speaker 1: mean right away and not doing anything to do that now,
Speaker 1: But when it happens, I don't know, think of it
Speaker 1: as a gift you're giving your body, so like everything
Speaker 1: that ever made you who you were in the first place.
Speaker 1: A little scary, but I guess I'm saying doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be because it's just going to happen. You're already born.
Speaker 1: It's too late, Hi, I think it might be easier
Speaker 1: for a Catholic to understand this particular secret. But I
Speaker 1: was a Catholic for a long time, and I guess
Speaker 1: about twenty years ago I started to lose all confidence
Speaker 1: that there was a such thing as a God who
Speaker 1: interacted with people on earth and you know, answered prayers
Speaker 1: in magical favors. So I basically became an agnostic slash
Speaker 1: atheist at that time. About twenty years ago, I worked
Speaker 1: in an office with a lot of people, and they
Speaker 1: all think of me as this really Catholic person because
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of Catholics in the office too. Some
Speaker 1: of the people in my department are my best friends
Speaker 1: and they're all Catholics. Well, a few years ago I cancer.
Speaker 1: It is an incurable form of cancer, and everybody was
Speaker 1: really afraid, you know, that I was going to die.
Speaker 1: And it's been treated, so I've still got a few
Speaker 1: years left in me, but I still have it and
Speaker 1: I still have to go to get chemo every week
Speaker 1: like I had for the past four and a half years.
Speaker 1: These folks want to pray with me, and they want
Speaker 1: to pray for me, and they give me a little
Speaker 1: religious messages. We all text together and there's little religious
Speaker 1: messages in there, and I keep getting invited to go
Speaker 1: in prayer circles and retreats. I'm turning all that stuff down.
Speaker 1: I never did do that stuff when I was a Catholic,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I'm not going to do it now,
Speaker 1: but I was one of the last vestiges of Catholicism
Speaker 1: that I have. It's feeling a little guilty that basically
Speaker 1: I'm lying to these people about being religious because I've
Speaker 1: never fasted up to them. There are a few people
Speaker 1: in the office who know that I really I'm more
Speaker 1: of a non spiritual Buddhist kind of a person where
Speaker 1: I'm kind of searching for enlightenment. But the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the people around me think, oh, he's a Catholic,
Speaker 1: We're going to pray for him because he's sick. I
Speaker 1: feel like telling him, if God didn't want me to
Speaker 1: have cancer, he wouldn't have to pray for it. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't have given it to me anyway, it's a messing.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about the time that I committed perjury.
Speaker 1: My rapist is suing me for defamation of character because
Speaker 1: I told people that he raped me, and they asked
Speaker 1: me a lot of questions about my sexual history because
Speaker 1: apparently sluts can't get raped, but that's yeah, and I
Speaker 1: minimized my history for sure. But then also they asked
Speaker 1: me if I had any malice or ill will towards him,
Speaker 1: and those are key legal term for determining defamation. And
Speaker 1: I had to lie through my teeth and pretends that
Speaker 1: I didn't picture him blowing up, like exploding into the
Speaker 1: jillion little pieces like a bomb, blew up inside of
Speaker 1: his stomach or something. Every time I closed my eyes
Speaker 1: while I was sitting there in the courtroom having to
Speaker 1: listen to him lie about what he did to me,
Speaker 1: I had to pretend I said that no, I didn't
Speaker 1: have any malice or ill will towards him, and all
Speaker 1: I wanted was to be left alone. And I wasn't angry.
Speaker 1: I was just hurt. But god damn it, if I'm angry,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Hi, I'm here to leave the secret.
Speaker 1: My name is I'm a female in her twenties. I'm
Speaker 1: covered in tattoos. I was a firefighter, both structure and wildland.
Speaker 1: I worked pretty dirty jobs and people tend to mistake
Speaker 1: me as very maculum lesbian. I like to make myself
Speaker 1: seem very gruffin edgy looking to other people, but when
Speaker 1: I come home at night, I like to stumble with
Speaker 1: my stuffed animals. My bed is covered in Pokemon stuffed animals.
Speaker 1: My favorite is a dorky looking charmander that was made
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and he's my favorite. He's my emotional
Speaker 1: support squad. Oh man, secret, Now I'm on the spot.
Speaker 1: I called after that, I guess my secret I'm not
Speaker 1: secret is that I don't know what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: And now I'm on the should call back again. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pretend again. My secret is that I tried to
Speaker 1: change my life after having a dead end job for
Speaker 1: eight years, spent the last two years in graduate school.
Speaker 1: And the secret I'm afraid to tell my friends is
Speaker 1: that I can't find the job and I'm quickly burning
Speaker 1: through all of my savings. I think I barely have
Speaker 1: like two thousand dollars in the bank, but I'm afraid
Speaker 1: to tell people. I'm afraid to tell people that I'm
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to go back to that dead end
Speaker 1: job that I swore I would never do again. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I just have this weird compulsion to look
Speaker 1: up infections like skin infections are like parasites, and I
Speaker 1: just I'm just fascinated by it. I'm just fascinated with
Speaker 1: things that are repulsive. I don't know, that's just like
Speaker 1: not something you don't want to tell everybody because that's
Speaker 1: just weird, it's flawed. But anyways, yeah, Hi, I am
Speaker 1: calling this number to lead a secret. Tonight, I ate
Speaker 1: an entire pink of chocolate peanut butter ice cream and
Speaker 1: it was docious and it took probably only ten minutes
Speaker 1: or so for me to do that. But the reason
Speaker 1: this is such a scandals because I have a PhD
Speaker 1: and nutrition and I'm currently a scientist studying obesity and
Speaker 1: type two diabetes. So who would I be able to
Speaker 1: share the secret with? Hey? My secret is, since I
Speaker 1: was a child, I've been an atheist. Like I just
Speaker 1: never felt any kind of religious feelings in my life.
Speaker 1: I may have tried praying a whole like five times,
Speaker 1: but the year Mario Kart eight came out around Christmas time.
Speaker 1: I prayed to God, I said, I will believe in
Speaker 1: you forever if you get me Mario Kart eight, and
Speaker 1: lo and behold, Christmas Day comes and I get Mario
Speaker 1: Kart eight and I'm like, oh, so happy about it.
Speaker 1: And my parents come and tell me and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, it was really hard to find that we
Speaker 1: almost gave up and then we found it. And their
Speaker 1: specific words were, it was like a miracle. And since
Speaker 1: then I still don't believe in God, but I think
Speaker 1: about that fairly often. There was one time I came
Speaker 1: back from a bar and I was walking towards the
Speaker 1: subway in Manhattan. I passed by stack of books that
Speaker 1: I thought were free books, so I snagged one of
Speaker 1: them off the top. What I didn't notice is that
Speaker 1: they were sitting on top of a blanket on the
Speaker 1: side of the street. And the book I snagged, the title,
Speaker 1: I think, said something about how to make yourself a
Speaker 1: better candidate for interviews for jobs. I flipped through it
Speaker 1: and the entire thing was dog yeared and highlighted, and
Speaker 1: clearly some homeless guy had really studied this book to
Speaker 1: make his plans to better his life. And so by
Speaker 1: the time I got into the subway, I realized this.
Speaker 1: It made me sick in the stomach that I would
Speaker 1: have taken this from somebody. And then I as soon
Speaker 1: as I got off the train, I threw it in
Speaker 1: the trash. And I feel awful about doing that. I
Speaker 1: hate that I did that. I hate that I couldn't
Speaker 1: have just taken the train back and put it back
Speaker 1: in the stack. I just want to say to him,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Hi. I guess I'd rather remain anonymous, even
Speaker 1: though my secret is, in my opinion, really dumb. But
Speaker 1: I play wordle every day and I pick it pretty
Speaker 1: serious in a sense. But I also have been what
Speaker 1: I feel like the people I play with would consider cheating.
Speaker 1: I use a word generator online to generate a word
Speaker 1: to start with, because I couldn't really think of anything
Speaker 1: original anymore. And then what I've done is I've taken
Speaker 1: the archive of every wordle so far, and I plug
Speaker 1: that into a website that took all the words and
Speaker 1: made a list alphabetically, and I keep that in my
Speaker 1: notes on my phone, and so every wordle every day,
Speaker 1: I put that new word into this alphabetize a list,
Speaker 1: and that way I can see what wordle was played,
Speaker 1: and I won't reuse that word, thinking that I'm coming
Speaker 1: up with an original word. And not only that, but
Speaker 1: based off of my tiles. In this game, I use
Speaker 1: this website called word Hippo, which allows me to plug
Speaker 1: in letters in a five letter word either exclude or
Speaker 1: include those letters, and so I'm able to generate every
Speaker 1: common five letter word that does or doesn't have the
Speaker 1: letters that I want, and since then, I have basically
Speaker 1: not gotten better a big game