Telltale art

Would you share your deepest secrets with a stranger? Writer Helena Dea Bala asked random people from Craigslist to open up — and the results are creepily cathartic

Six years ago, Helena Dea Bala sat at a Washington, DC, Starbucks, preparing to meet a complete stranger and hear her deepest, darkest secret.

Bala, a higher-education lobbyist, seemed to have a fulfilling life. She and her family had come to America from Albania when she was a girl, and she grew up “dirt poor.” Her father, an ambassador back home, worked as a security guard, and her mother — a doctor in Albania — cleaned houses with Bala’s help.

Bala eventually achieved her goal of graduating from law school, and she earned a job on Capitol Hill. But she was also drowning in debt and beginning to feel that her job was pointless.

That’s when a conversation with a homeless man sent her in a new direction.

His name was Joe, and he often panhandled for change outside Bala’s building. She would say hello and bring him leftover sandwiches.

One day, she passed him without dropping off food. “Are you upset with me?” he asked, wounded.

The question brought Bala nearly to tears. She went around the corner, bought a sandwich to share, and sat down with Joe. He shared intimate details about his life, including how he’d become homeless. Bala reciprocated by telling him about her difficult childhood.

Energized by the helpfulness of the confessional, Bala began thinking about how she could offer a similar service to others.

She logged on to Craigslist and placed a personal ad: “Tell me about yourself.”

It was an offer to listen, for free, to anyone interested in telling her things they’d never told anyone else. She would simply listen, then they would go their separate ways and that would be that.

Bala was flooded with replies, and she soon began meeting random people at coffee shops and other public places — to hear their personal tales of drug abuse, sexual confusion and marital infidelity.

With her subjects’ permission, Bala began writing down the stories. The result is the new book “Craigslist Confessional: A Collection of Secrets From Anonymous Strangers” (Gallery Books).

“I think that every single person I’ve spoken to has had a powerful story to tell,” Bala told The Post. “Each one of us has a story like this in us.”

Bala now lives on the Upper East Side with her husband and son.

“People in New York are a little bit more wary, a little less open to an experience like this,” the author said.

But the meetings do still happen, lasting from about two hours to as long as eight. Bala said she had to practice to not appear judgmental or “hijack the narrative.”

She admitted the job takes a toll, but said that the confessionals are “all about the strength of the human spirit — and how can that be anything other than inspirational?”

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