If not here, where can I?

We don't talk about it - none of us do. I'm sure the exception exists (it always does) but in conventional society that's few and far between. Even the sex and the city ladies left it alone, generally, based on my memory of a season's worth of shows. I have spent the last week working solely on it - finding citations and abstracts, now searching for books (and more bibliographies), starting to read articles. The curse. The blessing. And society has done its magic well enough that I can't look people in the eye when I tell them what it is I'm researching. A project about women in Nepal is what I tell them; it's not untrue, just not wholly true. I told my mother the whole truth, Ethan knows - he knew before I did - but not my father. I couldn't break that barrier. I see the articles about women in the US, how we are trained from our pre-pubescent years to keep it a secret and feel shame if anyone (especially male!) knows. Certainly things change as we age and time goes on and I am no longer held in stifling fear but I am (we all are) still secretive, within reason. Which is rather absurd. What does it really matter? On occasion when people find out I notice no real difference in their relationship to me. Ethan may tease now and again but we're like that all the time. And yet I have troubled memories: not letting the boys look through our backpacks, being mortified at sending my father to the store (why can't you go, mom?), waking up in the desert surrounded by classmates and trying not to panic. It's not that I feel like we ought to announce it, I have just recently been prodded to wonder about the 50mg elephant in the room.