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“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“Okay. I can see how finding out you have siblings can be a shock. Let’s break it down into small bites. Yes?”

My chest expands with a deep inhale as if I’m preparing to go under water. “Yes.”

“Tell me how you feel about letting your father into your life.”

I drop to my bed, lie on my back and adjust the buds in my ears. “I think he really cares about me. He told me all about growing up, showed me pictures of his parents and grandparents. He told me he regrets not being in my life. He didn’t know about me at first, and when he found out, my mother pushed him away, and he let her. He sent her money, but he didn’t stay around to check on me.”

“So, he cares about you. He regrets not being present in your life and wants to make amends. Do you want him in your life?”

“Yes, but I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of?” His voice softens, and I push my buds in to hear him better.

“Disappointing him. Disappointing myself. I don’t know.”

“I think you know.”

Jesus. “This is hard. Why is it so hard?”

“We all fear speaking out our innermost thoughts because that makes them real. Secrets, pain, shame—all of it thrives in the dark. The more we bury and hide them, the stronger and bigger they grow. Speaking up doesn’t make them real, it weakens them. The fear is a result of the lies we tell ourselves to feel safer. But we don’t feel safer at all, do we?”

“No. I don’t feel safer.”

“Why not?” He waits for me to connect the dots.

“Because I’m always afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“That someone will find out. That someone will figure out all of my secrets.” And pain and shame.

“Exactly. So we trap ourselves in this never-ending loop. Bury the secrets and the shame as deep as we can so no one can find them, and then we live in fear of someone finding out. We hold ourselves hostage to our own humanity.”

“We hold ourselves hostage to our own humanity,” I repeat, letting it sink in.

“Yes. No one is perfect. Every single person on this planet has skeletons in their closets and shame over them. It’s our collective flaw as a human race.”

“How do we fix that?”

“We deal with shame the same way you’d deal with someone who’s blackmailing you.”

“Pay them off?”

He laughs. “No. The way to stop someone from blackmailing you is to remove what they hold over you.”

“I’m not getting it.”

“Someone can’t blackmail you if you expose whatever they have on you first. You come clean and show the world whatever is the thing that has a hold on you. You beat them at their own game.”

I’m shaking my head before he even finishes speaking. And as if he can sense it, he speaks again.

“Stop it. That’s shame and fear talking to you right now. That’s shame and fear blackmailing you into thinking you have to hide and run and give in to whatever it wants. It’s not true. It’s a lie.”

“You don’t know what I have to hide.”

Chapter Twenty-Two