When I was younger, my best friend confided in me a "deep dark secret," at least as deep and dark as a secret can get when you're a kid, and swore me to secrecy. While, admittedly, in hindsight, the secret wasn't so deep and dark or so horrible to keep, it ate away at me. However, I was a noble friend so I wasn't about to "let the cat out of the bag" and give away her secret, so I didn't tell anyone.
I kept her secret for a long time, even until we weren't best friends anymore, and I still keep it today. In truth, the guilt doesn't eat at me anymore, considering it is a secret that is stale with age and no longer relevant, plus the fact that now, at sixteen, the secret doesn't seem so horrible anymore. For a while, especially the first couple of weeks and months after she told me, I felt racked with guilt about not "telling on her." In fact, whenever my mother asked me what was going on in my life, I feared it was because she knew about the secret that I was keeping and, consequently, I started avoiding these mother-daughter chats. I became paranoid about it to a certain extent. While it may have been an overreaction at the time, guilt can do that to a person without a doubt.
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