Secret

I'm horrible at lying. Whenever I play BS, the card game, I'm always the last one out. Never mind that people are generally very perceptive and realize that there can't possibly be five fives in one deck. There's something about the way I say it - maybe the intonation - that makes people realize that I'm twisting the truth.

Secrets are funny things. You're told them in confidence. What does that even mean - in confidence? Is it because the person who told you the secret is confident that you'll be strong enough, be good enough, be able enough to keep it a secret? The problem is, the secret is bound to affect you. you look at the people involved differently, because you now know something that you shouldn't know. I'm positive that slight behavioral changes occur as well. So if someone can pick up on it, won't that alert them that you know? I mean, I know I have my moments where I wonder - Gee...does she knows about...?

We all have secrets. We all have skeletons in our closet. It's nothing to be proud of, but it's also nothing to be ashamed of. People make mistakes. Bad decisions. Act on cloudy judgment. Chalk it up to life learning.

I keep secrets, but there is nothing about me that I - and only I - know. If my closest friends were to gather in one place, you could effectively write my entire life story, and no secret love child would come out of the woodwork twenty years later. All my secrets have been released out into the world.

Is it okay that my life is such an open book? Everyone says that you should keep certain things to yourself, so that they belong to you and only you. But the way I've been living my life, my life belongs to not just me, but also to a select few. Up until now, I've thought that it's been okay to be so trusting. So naive, in a sense.

I've placed my trust in these people. And they're deserving of my trust. Or so I think.

The worst feeling in the world is being betrayed.

But am I right to be so angry? I mean, I was the one who gave away my secret. Clearly, the solution to this would be for me to privatize my life more. It is, technically, my fault for feeling the need to share. But like I said, I'm very bad at lying. If something bad is going on in my life, and someone cares enough about me that they 1.) can realize that I'm having a bad day, and 2.) pry long enough to see what's wrong to make me feel better, I'm going to tell them. I expect them to realize that my opening up is somewhat sacred. That secret? It's a piece of my life that they now, in some sense, own.

My secrets are little vignettes about my life. They've helped mold me into the person I am today. If you cherish me at all, you'd keep my skeletons in our now-shared closets. It's a testament to how much I trust your friendship that I even allow you to peek into my mess of a life.

I die a little, every time a secret gets out.