keeping secrets

I don't really like Facebook apps. For the most part, I only have about 3 that I like and use. However, I recently added a little app called Honesty Box, where your friends can send you completely anonymous messages to tell you what they REALLY think. Sure, most of the people that use it are probably dying to find out if someone has a crush on them, but I bet every once in a while someone receives a gem.

I got one. My very first anonymous message read thus:

"You once asked me to keep a secret for you. I was very uncomfortable doing so, but I hope it shows you how much you mean to me that I did.
Please don't ever ask me to do something like that again."

Wow. Talk about painful but well-deserved honesty. I had no idea who sent it, but I realized that one of my friends cared about me so much that they would do something like that for me. I felt ashamed and strangely grateful at the same time.

For some reason, this morning, I was thinking about it again, and suddenly received a fierce slap to the face (and a kick to the heart):

I HAD NO IDEA WHO SENT IT.

That meant that I have asked so many of my closest friends to do this terrible thing for me that I had no way of narrowing down who had sent the message. I've gambled my precious friendships just so I could get away with something I probably shouldn't have been doing in the first place, just so I didn't have to face the music and own up to my own mistakes.

Wow. What a way to live my life - running away from the things I didn't want to face, and asking my friends, the people who I care about most in the world, to cover up for me at the expense of their own self-worth. What a horrible thing for me to do.

To the person who sent this anonymous message to me... and also to my other friends who have experienced the same thing:

I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking, but that's no excuse. I should never have asked you to do that for me. I hope you can forgive me.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing this fault of mine to light. Thank you for sticking by me even though I asked you to do something like that.

All I can do now is be conscious of this tendency and refuse to repeat it ever again... and hopefully my good friends will help me keep to the straight and narrow with their honesty.