Secrets & Lies

For the most part, I've never been good at keeping secrets.

There. I said it.

If you ask me to keep it between us, yeah, I'll probably keep it to myself. But usually, one has to say something to the effect of "this stays between us..." or "Don't tell anyone this or I will gouge your eye out with my finger" for me to keep it truly private. My dad's the same way. Unless I preface something with "Do NOT tell this to mom," it's usually fair game for parental discussion and I will, in fact, hear about it later from my mother. When I have called my dad out on this (on more than one occasion), I have been met with a sheepish look and "Oh, was I not supposed to tell her that?"

Eh. Maybe it's a hereditary thing. Who knows?

Perhaps it's because I'm so open about myself, whether it be my experiences and emotions. Truth be known, I really don't censor myself and that does get me into a lot of trouble sometimes. I suffer from a chronic case of TMI-tis. And it might also be fair to say that I really have no shame.

Anyway, I've had quite a few problems, this year. As of late, my biggest problem has been my mouth. That is, it just doesn't know when to shut the fuck up. A secret that I told to, well, a lot of people came back to haunt me while driving home from some bars this last Saturday night. Basically, a friend--we'll call her "Sally" (who had no idea that it was supposed to be a secret)--blurted something out that made it pretty obvious that I had spilled the beans to her. See, it was a secret shared between me and another friend--we'll call them X. I had previously told X that I mentioned the secret to only "a few people," when it fact, I had told pretty much, well, let's just say it was a little more than "a few." So, when Sally made the comment in the car, it opened up a whole can of worms in the sense that X wanted to know just who and how many people I'd told.

I told X, well, "a lot of people, actually." But what I didn't tell X was that I told the One Person I Really Wasn't Supposed to Tell. In fact, I can pretty much tell you that, in the History of Not Keeping Secrets, it was one of the worst disclosures of information ever.

Ever ever!

The One Person I Really Wasn't Supposed to Tell should never have known and it was really a true Hal Moment (what else, right?) how it came to pass that they did find out. At the same time, though, X would never know that I told the person (partly because said person uses a lot more discretion than myself). So, why tell?

And that is where my guilty conscience kicked in. Dammit.

I really had a true case of the devil and the angel on my shoulder. I could hear the angel saying, "you have a window of opportunity to do the right thing and tell them the horrible thing you did!" On the other side of my noggin, I could hear the devil shouting, "ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?! WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?! ARE YOU RETARDED?!?! WHAT IS THE POINT, OTHER THAN TO UPSET A FRIEND?!"

Man, that devil had a pretty good fucking point. Other than to clear my conscience and make myself feel better, what would be the point of hurting this friend who, up until this point, had been none the wiser? The devil was smart. The devil was right.

Too bad the angel, like the house, always wins.

I told my friend that I told the One Person I Really Wasn't Supposed to Tell. It wasn't pretty. Yeah, we're still friends and I think we're good at this point, but it's going to be a long time before they can fully trust me again. Still, I'm not sure that telling them was the right move. As soon as I confessed, a string of thoughts crossed my mind: 20 seconds ago, we were sitting here, enjoying each others' company, not a care in the world, everything was just fine. And now? In the course of 20 second, everything has changed. Was it worth it?

Ignorance, as they say, can truly be blissful.

Which leads me to the following question: When is honesty not, in fact, the best policy, but the absolute worst?

I think if I've learned anything this week, it's that if friendships are to survive and trust is to exist, some secrets need to be had. And, in my case, kept.

Education truly is expensive sometimes.