In a darkened hall, a shaky-voiced student confessed she had cut herself for four years of her life to an audience of more than 1,000 last night.
This secret was just one of dozens revealed, prompted by Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret and the last speaker of the semester in the Distinguished Speaker Series. "Courage like that is contagious," Warren said of the student.
PostSecret is a community art project in which people write their secrets on postcards and mail in to be posted online.
"Everyone has a secret that would break your heart if you knew," Warren said. "But if you just thought about that, I think there would be more understanding, more compassion, more peace in the world."
Warren, sometimes called the most "trusted stranger in America," encouraged audience members to share their secrets so as to focus on the "frailty and heroism in all of our lives, [that] often goes unnoticed."
Another student revealed she is taking anti-depressants, something only one of her friends knows.
"I don't want it to be wrong," the student said. "I don't want to feel bad about it."
Taking a different tone, one student detailed a story from her childhood. She found an open condom wrapper on the floor of her mother's bedroom.
"I yelled at her for eating candy in bed," she said to laughter.
One student said she wrote a few postcards to send to Warren, but had left them in the West Dining Hall, asking the audience if anyone had found them. The crowd turned their heads when a shout from the back of the room called, "I did!"
The discoverer of the postcards said she left them there for others to read. Warren said the community sharing will then continue.
Before the community confessions, Warren showed pictures of postcards that were banned from his books.
One secret described the power of kindness. Every time the author worked up enough courage to swallow pills, someone did something to make the person want to live.
"I've never said thank you for saving my life. People have no idea how far kindness can go, I'm LIVING PROOF," the postcard read.
Other postcards revealed laughter-inducing secrets.
"I like to watch Dr. Phil," a postcard stated. "Drunk."
Warren said one of the postcards that has most affected him is about a secret revealing the author's bout in a mental ward.
"When I was in a mental ward I would look out the window a lot," the postcard read. Now released from the ward, the author rides by that same window on a bike and smiles.
"Sometimes it touches your soul -- this one is mine," Warren said about the postcard.
Warren said he could relate to this secret on a personal level.
"Children broken by the world become the adults most likely to change it," Warren said.
He said the secrets revealed through PostSecret show how every person has a remarkable story to tell.
"How extraordinary our lives are just underneath the surface," Warren said.
Lastly, Warren revealed his own secret to the audience. In fourth grade, a group of boys pushed him to the ground, held his eyelids open, and spit into his eyes repeatedly.
"Free you secrets and become who you are," he said as he ripped up his personal postcard to a standing ovation.
