Secrets Secrets Are No Fun

They aren't. I once kept a "bad" secret that I didn't think was bad until I realized that someone else could have lost their job because of it. There was an extremely stressful three hour period of phone calls and correspondence where all I could do was lie. I was lying to save myself. of course, but once I realized this other person could get fired, I began lying for them too. There were more lies than I could keep track of, and it took a lot of thinking for me to have these lies go together. No conflicting events.

Finally the matter was resolved. The person was fine and so was I. Yet, I still couldn't shake that awful feeling of how much I had lied and that secret that I was keeping from everyone. It wasn't such a big deal at first, as a matter of fact, but one lie led to another and suddenly it was a matter of keeping a job or losing it, all because of a stupid mistake I had made. There's also a strange sort of shame that comes with being good at lying. So they believed me this one time, but does that mean I'll have to lie more in the future? It had become less about saving me and more about saving the other's feelings.

To this day I haven't told anyone.