Based on how supermarket magazines talk about them, you’d think secrets are just trivial pieces of gossip. But some are far more dangerous.

Joyce isn’t talking about high school cafeteria secrets like “Nathan has a crush on Lisa.” He’s talking about the kinds of dark secrets that destroy relationships like affairs, addictions, or carefully constructed lies. Though these secrets are a terror to reveal, they can be an even greater burden to carry.

They corrode the soul and eat at their hosts like metastasizing cancer cells.

We think these heavy-hitting secrets shield us, but really, they imprison us. Joyce describes these secrets as an oppressive king whose reign turns the heart dark, and blocks our capacity for intimacy. But these very same secrets yearn for revolt. They want freedom, to rise up and dethrone their oppressor.

Joyce lays bare the paradox of dark secrets – the tug of war between the ego’s desire to conceal them and the soul’s need to express them.