CarizzCruzem

Have you betrayed anyone’s trust before? Have you lied to anyone’s face? In one way or the other, I’ve done both to a number of people, or worse, to friends I had in the past. I never learned the gravity of what I did to them.

Now, let’s turn the table. Has anyone betrayed your trust before? Have you been lied to? Yeah, some people have done both to me… and yeah, even by the people I considered friends. Man, it was painful!

You’d tell someone a secret about your past. You’d also tell her (I use a female pronoun ONLY because I’m of the female population. It does not necessarily mean that it was a girl who’d betrayed my trust… but perhaps it was) the consequences if certain people learned about what you just told them. And then, she’d promise her lips are sealed. Soon, you became really good friends… or so you thought. After that, time came when you had to part ways, not really part ways as in you were to go in Tomboctou or in Antarctica, just changed school section perhaps. Then, and this was where it got a little more painful, you noticed that you were not that close with each other anymore… or that she was avoiding you. You knew something was wrong but you just couldn’t pinpoint what. And then all of a sudden, it swallowed you like a tsunami… you were struggling to swim up, flailing your four limbs as water flooded everything in sight and you drank more mud water. But you were already trapped and being carried to deeper seas. You panicked and something banged your head. Then, you lost consciousness.

I got carried away, sorry. Ok perhaps it didn’t do me that much harm. But it would have been like that; if it wasn’t for another very thoughtful person telling me that she was talking. Yeah, the friend whom I entrusted the very core of my existence told someone else my secret… the very secret that would cause me to be locked up, thrown the keys away, sent to some remote places I’d never heard of and left me there… still locked up.

To this, I remained quiet. I didn’t go to her and punched her face in public, which was just about the least I could do to her. I’m not into slapping… it’s a little girlish. Ok, yeah, I’m of the female population… but it’s another issue… I’m not a lesbian, so don’t get ideas. She didn’t know I knew she told on me. And I want it to stay that way. I just can’t believe she’d do that when I clearly defined the consequences. I don’t like thinking bad things about a person. So I just thought, perhaps she was too young to be trusted. Or maybe, she couldn’t handle such a huge secret that she felt like exploding so she had to tell someone.

But while thinking about those things, I got a glimpse of myself back when I was 15. A friend told me about a terrible secret. It wasn’t about her; it was about another girl who wasn’t exactly my close friend. But even if the girl wasn’t a friend, when my friend told me the secret, it stopped on me. I didn’t go to another friend and tell the secret. I didn’t want anyone to tell on me. I religiously believe in the adage “What you sow, you will reap.” But what I wasn’t aware of was, other people were spreading the secret. Soon enough, we were called by an authority because the secret spread like wildfire. There were about 30 people who were called. We were asked who told us and whom we told. Well guess what, as it happened, out of 30, only two of us kept the secret.

And then, I remembered all the instances when someone trusted me with their secret and I’ve kept them all. Some of those people are now in places I don’t know where and whom I’m not sure if I’d still see them, but still, I’ve kept my word that I won’t tell a soul. Since that day when I was 15, I’ve promised to God and to myself that I won’t tell on anyone. Even if they don’t tell me that what they’ve just said is supposed to be a secret. What has been said between me and this one person will not be known by the next, UNLESS, the first person is the one telling. There were also many instances when I went out of a room because I didn’t like the way people were talking about someone else behind his or her back. I don’t even force people into telling me what they know. If they don’t want to tell me anything, I leave them alone. But usually, people trust me and I don’t want to betray their trust. Trust is gained, not forced on people and it is easily broken and if it did break, you can be sure that it is so hard to gain back.

I just hate blabbermouth!