The things I will never tell anyone.

My heart is a locked door. Not a door that everyone is secretly waiting to open. Not a door that needs the right person to find the key. I simply don't give anyone the key.

People know me, but only in this way I have allowed them to know me. Everything anyone knows about me is a version. I deliberately put in front of them. A carefully selected collection of words, reactions, jokes, silences, habits and stories.

Even when I am honest. I decide howmuch honesty someone gets. That is the part nobody knows.

They might think they understand me because I told them something personal. They don't realize that there are ten other things behind it that I doliberately kept hidden.

I can tell someone what happened without telling them what it did to me. I can laughabout something thatstill hurts. I can say, " I don't care," when I care far more than I want to admit. I can make a joke our of something that genuinely scares me. Humour is convenient that way.

People laugh, the conversation moves on and nobody asks what was underneath the joke. There are thoughts. I would never say aloud because once spoken, they become someone else's knowledge.

Some fears are safer inside my head. Some ambitions sound embarrassing when spoken. Some resentments are too ugly to confess. Some dreams are too private to expose to another person's opinion. And there are things I pretend don't matter because admitting that they matter would make me vulnerable.

I would rather look indifferent than let someone know they affected me. I would rather disappear than explain why something hurt. I would rather carry something alone than risk someone misunderstanding it. Maybe that isn't strength. Maybe it is simply the way I learned to protect myself.

I don't even know whether I want anyone to completely understand me.

People say they want honesty, but I sometimes wonder how much honesty they can actually tolerate.

They want the complicated version of you until your complications become inconvenient. They want vulnerability until it demands responsibility. They want your truth until your truth changes the way they see you. So I keep mine . There is a version of me that nobody has met. Not my family. Not my friends. Not the people who think they know me best.

She knows everything. Every contradiction. Every ugly thought. Every secret fear. Every desire. I refuse to explain. Every memory I pretend has stopped mattering. She knows the person behind every version. I have shown the world.

And perhaps that is enough. My heart is not a public place. People can visit the rooms I leave unlocked.

They can know the version of me I choose to introduce. But the deepest rooms remain mine. Some truths are not secrets because they are shameful. They are secrets because they are too completely mine.