With the rise of social media — Facebook, Instagram Stories, YouTube vlogs, BeReal, TikTok, and blogs like this, it feels like we know everything about each other. Sometimes we hide behind the “close friends” option on Insta stories if there’s something particularly silly or scandalous that we do not wish to share with the whole world. Still, many of us are open books online. I’ve caught myself rolling my eyes wondering, “doesn’t anybody leave anything to the imagination anymore?” You may have wondered the same about me.

This is not a post about social media. This is a post about secrets.

To start, so you will trust me, I will tell you something that is not quite a secret, but something that makes me squirm a little and I have certainly tried to hide. I change the subject or make a self deprecating joke if it comes up, and I certainly do not freely offer it up. You may laugh. It sounds trivial, and I suppose it is. It is also the most embarrassing thing that I’ve experienced. Not like tripping with your lunch tray in the cafeteria, but deep humiliation.

When I was a freshman in college, I went through sorority recruitment. Of the 5 sororities on campus at the time, I was only ever interested in 2 of them. After several exhausting days of rush, I learned going into pref night (the final round) that one of my two choices dropped me. Partly because of grades (though I was above the technical GPA requirement, I learned that is never actually their minimum GPA) and partly because I disclosed, in confidence I wrongly believed, that I was leaning slightly toward the other sorority. I was really disappointed, but told myself it was okay. I had made great relationships with girls in the other sorority. I’d be fine.

Without going into all the details of sorority rush, although that could be a fun story for another time, I filled out my bid card and said I was not interested in ANY other sororities except the one I was leaning toward all along. I put all my eggs in this basket; no risk no reward. Then the phone call came. I didn’t get a bid. They dropped me, and they said it was due to grades. Again, I was above the minimum GPA requirement, but like the naïve, hardly 18 year old I was, I had 18 hours including Chemistry my first semester and was slapped in the face by the real world when I realized I couldn’t skate through class and have above a 4.0 like I did in high school. A rite of passage, but unhelpful when you are quite literally being ranked.

Hear me say this: I understand to many of you this is the definition of a champagne problem. Oh, poor girl didn’t get picked by the sorority she wanted. Will she survive?

Friends, I felt like I would not. This was not about the sorority. This was about rejection. Self worth. Self doubt.

Until college, I think it is fair to say I was a big fish in a little pond (you may fact check me on that. Although immodest I do not think it is untrue). Now, though, I was nobody’s choice. Why didn’t they like me? Was I not pretty enough? Smart enough? Engaging enough? Fun enough? What was wrong with ME? Worse, I had already told everybody I was going to join a sorority. I posted daily rush updates on Facebook which was not unusual in 2009, my mom told everyone back home, all my friends knew. Except, they didn’t pick me. They didn’t… want me? What? Okay. I am not worthy of friendship. Message received. And everybody knew.

Worse, it seemed like every girl in my dorm was pledging at the same time. Every girl except me. This is of course untrue, but when I heard the pledges in my hallway giggling and somewhat nervously scurrying to chapter meeting every Tuesday evening, I think I cried every single time.

I joined a different sorority the following semester, and it really was a better fit for me. But I am 32 years old and I still feel a twinge of embarrassment and rejection when I think of that entire semester. I am still extremely sensitive to rejection. I just knew that I was the only person who had ever experienced this.

Except I wasn’t. Of course I wasn’t.

After the world’s longest introduction, that is actually what I want to write about. I truly believed I was the only person in the entire world who had experienced this. The only girl to ever be rejected by a sorority she wanted so badly to join. The only girl to be rejected when she hoped, rather expected, to be embraced. I don’t have the data, but I would bet thousands of girls a year don’t get bids to their top sorority. Yet I truly, deeply believed this was an experience only I could understand.

The older I get and the more deep connections I form, the more I realize that there are so very few unique experiences. When something painful or embarrassing happens we often keep it a secret. Why? Because nobody understands. Nobody else could possibly feel the way I feel right now. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.

Marriages struggle, and then they sometimes dissolve. People have mental health struggles that require professional intervention. Science seems to fail and people who desperately want children are unable to biologically have them. People who seem to have it all are barely staying afloat with finances. I learned recently that someone I really like spent 15 years telling everyone she had a college degree, when in fact she knew she was actually 2 classes short of graduating.

You don’t have to tell me your secrets, but I hope you will tell someone. The danger in secrets is that they whisper to you that you are the only one. That nobody could understand. That you’ll be judged for your honesty. Friend, you are never the only one. You are not the only one to struggle. You are not the only one to be humiliated. You are not the only one to screw up in a major way.

Shame lives in darkness and grows in isolation. Whatever you have done, whatever you have failed to do, I promise you are not the only one.