Shame On A Postcard, reprised.

I am feeling rather smug this morning.

I remember a time last year when I first discovered the Post Secrets site. Then, the news went round like a virus, a meme, and I assumed everybody knew. And then I forgot all about it.

Newsweek has finally discovered the site and produced an article - hence the smug sensation. Given that somewhere else the blog is described as the 'third most popular', I should imagine I am not alone in feeling this is a bit of a late discovery on their part.

Nonetheless I was glad to be reminded of it as so, so many more thoughts have been mailed in. It seems like a visit to Post Secrets is a visit to one's own values, particularly when the content is dark or sad and I find myself entering with a level of reverence, stilled preparation for the possibility that every third or fourth card, I will be sharing someone's private hell and their deepest, most painful secret.

All that said, its not a site to visit before breakfast. Already this morning I have tested the urge to feel sympathy and respect by reading a postcard covered in hair clippings that the writer claims to have taken from his/her babysitting charges in their sleep. Then I got left trying to imagine what could have happened to make another woman hate her breasts so much that she hoped for cancer as an excuse to have them removed.

In amongst everything else is a need to be alert for tiny telltale signs that this or that card was not written as an exorcism, but as a joke or an attempt to shock.

Its tiring.

And maybe that's why I stopped visiting, last time.