A History of Shhh

A HISTORY OF SHHH

EPISODE 1—The Sound of Silence

“Are you listening?

You, my love, are like the color red.

Vibrant, life-bringing, full, and arresting.

The sign of a distant star as it moves further through the universe—every day taking on mass—and with the splendor of a divine plan, the richness of density and gravity grows within you.

There’s a greatness about you.

It’s profound and visible to far-off observers who dare to try and comprehend the mysteries of the things that cannot be known—that can only be seen.

Be bold.

Be large.

But most of all— don’t ever hide.

Hello, my new listeners and friends.

I promise I’m going to tell you what happened. What really happened. But for you to truly understand, I have to say a few things first.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you probably keep secrets. You're not alone.

I keep secrets. We all do.

Like you and everyone else, I guard mine—bury them deep down inside me so no one can see how filthy they are. But somewhere along the way, they stopped being just hidden thoughts. They became me.

Secrets are the foundation everything else is built on. I'm guessing you might see some truth in that.

Sometimes I love them because they made me strong. Sometimes I hate them because I don't feel free. Sometimes—I pretended they aren’t there at all.

My questions for you is— If we all have secrets, and they are our foundation, how can we ever know each other? Help each other? How can we ever not feel alone?

Secrets have a universal effect. They create distance. Space between who we really are, and how we are perceived. One day I woke up and realized no one truly knew me.

But that ends today, because I’m sick of hiding the dirty parts. This is a portrait of a mind and I'm going to use all the colors in the palette. Some things you may relate to, some things you might not understand.

This podcast is a release. A lit fire beneath the idea that some things are too sacred, too shameful, too twisted to say aloud. I won’t hold back—not in what I say, and not in how I say it. My hope is, somewhere in these pages you’ll see the truth in these words— You are not alone. I’m here with you. I’ll go first. Maybe one day, you’ll feel inspired to follow.

This is not a story for children.

Despite all the hours spent lost in colorful books and animation— all the fanciful dreamscapes of my youth, I was warned over and over that life isn’t a fairytale. But now I wonder, what if it is?

In cultures that legitimately believe in fairies— and yes, some cultures do—places like Japan, Ireland, and Iceland (where they have legal and cultural practices that respect beliefs in hidden people)—they don’t think of them as Tinkerbell-type creatures. They see them as immortal beings that dance between worlds. As those who occasionally dabble in our affairs, having both the power and the disinclination to change the fates of silly humans.

To them—fairies are wise where we are simple.

That’s just some context on the word—fairytale. Something so common that perhaps we’ve stopped wondering what it means.

I think anyone will agree that some truths are so important that they have to be passed on. The problem is, we love our children, and don't want to scare them. So we crunch the lessons down to pinks and blues, blacks and whites then lay them out as a blueprint for life.

The fairytales were told, the intentions were good, and the traps were set.

Maybe we told them the magical parts weren't real, but that there was a lesson. So what remained?

No one said it, we probably didn't even notice, but all that was left was a one dimensional character. And the take-away? This is the way to be.

I'm not saying it's anyone's fault. Everyone is doing their best. We hug our kids, tell them to be nice, then we send them out into the world totally unprepared. And all the scenes they encounter that weren't supposed to be in the real life arc? Those get removed. And where did they go? Well, that's a secret.

Me personally, I think the lore has roots in reality—even the magical parts. It may not look how you’d expect, but you'll probably see some of the fairytales in my story.

You don't have to believe me, but maybe if you keep reading all these magical colors will seep into your mind.

Dare with me to imagine.

What if there are real-world monsters and princes on horses, demigods, and superheroes or other men who can fly? What if it matters what lies in the deep dark woods, and rather than fearing its mysteries, we dared to explore? What if instead of the princess having a time-resistant name, she had no name at all? What if all these characters lived in one person: the witch, the jealous queen, the ruby-lipped virgin, and the water-bound dreamer who would do anything to walk on land? Then what if, instead of some external battle, the war raged on a different plane. And what if the only weapons were things good little girls should never ever speak of?

Explore with me, won’t you, the colorful true story where one girl grew to be a woman. But don’t worry, it can’t hurt you if you don't want it to be real. I’ll keep it all safely within the high literary walls of A History of Shhh. Real world be damned. I’m your host, Anonymous.

Despite all these warnings, I grew up believing the world was both magical and cruel — and that maybe, deep down, I was too.

The first thing you should know about me is that I love neuroscience and psychology. I don't just read the crunchy, new-age, pop-media articles (I do read these), but I also read actual scientific studies. The single-spaced, twenty-page-long brain bleeds that use words like fractional anisotropy, heterogeneity and lateralization then later crunch them down to abbreviations just to be mean. I usually don't understand them the first time through cause I'm not that smart, but by the third or fourth time they start to crack the lead (because I am that determined).

I do this because the brain fascinated me.

How does a three pound squishy mass of goo take what's out there and turn it into my whole world? How does it sift through millions of sights, sounds, smells, and sensations every second and filters through them—deleting stuff like the tip of my nose from constant consciousness? You just noticed the tip of your nose didn't you?

The brain predicts before it knows, freeing up bandwidth for other tasks. This is called the familiarity heuristic. The predictions come from past connection and rather than noticing new patterns, it confirms or rejects the assumptions it's made based on old ones.

What this means is sounds aren’t real. Neither are the things you see or touch. They are accepted assumptions based on your unique framework of reference. Real is something universal— a truth. Nothing is real. As Nietzsche said, ‘There are no facts, only interpretation.’

Forming new neural pathways is expensive energy-wise, and since your brain already burns about twenty-five percent of your calories, it tends to conserve.

Plus, there's a ton of shit coming at you every second. If you weren’t given that gift, the ability to alter reality to suit your world, every moment would be too much, too overwhelming to comprehend. I couldn't notice that my kids suddenly went quiet (the constant noise isn't the problem in my house, it's the silence—that's when they get into trouble), write, smell some funny smell and also make a mental note to look up how to spell Nietzsche.

Have you ever recounted an event with a friend where you were both present and found that you have opposing impressions or recollections? We truly see things as we are, not as they are. We draw from our past and lessons we’ve hard learned to paint a picture of our worlds— whether it is true, no one can say, but it feels true to you.

I’m telling you this— not because I think you need a simple lesson in brain function, but because you must understand it as you listen to my story. Truth and reality aren’t what matter. What matters is what I am willing to tell and why. Consider yourself warned.

I will probably get some things wrong. Like I said, I can’t say what really happened. I can only show you how I remember it.

I always tell my kids to start with the hard stuff because every step you take afterward becomes easy— wisdom passed down from my father to me. So, that is how we will start.

I almost didn’t write this podcast because of how hard this one part would be to share. As you might guess, I’m inclined to rush through it. But after twenty-five years of sidestepping, and being haunted by brief flashes of reflection—I know the rest of the story can’t be told without mentioning this one incident. Because it’s the context everything else is built around.

The truth is, I don’t remember much about the actual event. What I remember clearly is the aftermath. A ferocious, biting shame mixed with a stalling sensation—courtesy of regret. The anger hadn’t come yet. But it would.

Before this one moment, I was extraordinarily vivacious and outgoing, very much seeking center stage. After it, I did all I could to disappear. I didn’t want anyone to notice me because, at that age, peers are cruel. There is no empathy.

I used to think empathy was about kindness. Patience. Being the bigger person. But that’s easy when nothing’s on the line.

To me now, empathy is earned. It’s forged in those moments when your integrity’s on trial and you fail—and then you have to live with that. It’s looking at someone else’s wreckage and not flinching because you’ve seen your own.

The point is, you don’t get to say ‘I would never’ until you’ve been there. Until the choices you swore you’d never make are the only ones left. And once that happens, you either grow bitter… or you get better at grace.

Well, I've shown you I'm a magical thinker with the fairytale talk, told you I'm grounded with all the science stuff, delayed with the bit about empathy.

Now, it's time to eat the poisoned apple.

You ready?"