Secrets, Secrets: Response to Kenna's Prompt

So as I mentioned in my last post, my sisters do not think I can keep secrets. When they first called me out on that fact, I was really angry and got defensive. However, as time has gone on I have realized that I am terrible at keep secrets when it comes to my family. I tell my mom everything, about everyone. So when I say I will not tell anyone, my mom is the exception. Recently, I kept a big secret from my mom. Only to find out that she already knew.

Here is how it went down. Holly, being the social butterfly that she is, wanted to have a Fourth of July party at our cabin. Side note, our cabin is two hours away from our actual home base. Holly asked my parents if she and some friends could go out to the cabin to celebrate. My parents said no because they would be out of town and did not feel comfortable will people being there without them present. This did not go over well with Holly. So, being the rebellious child that she is, Holly stole the cabin keys from my parent’s room and headed up to the cabin with friends. She told my parents that she was going to her friend’s grandparent’s cabin. She even went as far as turning all location finding services off on her phone so nobody could track her phone or find her location. So fast forward a week and my mom finds the cabin keys in Holly’s car. Obviously my mom confronts Holly, and Holly says that she took them before she asked to go, and never put them back. By this point, Holly had already told all of the sisters. Fast forward another week and my dad is chatting with our neighbor at the cabin at the neighbor mentions Holly being up there with some friends over the Fourth of July. My dad does not do anything with this information. Later that week my mom finds photos from Holly’s trip on the computer, prints them off and confronts her again. All Holly has to say is oops. My mom goes to my dad, and my dad just goes ‘yeah I know, Mike (our neighbor) told me.’ In the end my parents did not punish Holly. It is something we all just laugh about now.

For me it strengthened my bond with Holly, because I was trying to prove to her that she could trust me to keep these bigger secrets. I was doing a pretty good job of it, and was super proud of myself for keeping it. But then my pride was shot down when I found out literally everyone else in the family knew about it. In the end, Holly has started to view me as more trustworthy, which is good because it creates a relationship where we can open dialogue. The family was not super affected by this secret. Like I said, it is something we laugh about. With my family, it is really hard to keep secrets from each other, just because I am so close with my sisters, and we talk about everything, secrets get shared. At the end of the day, I really like that I can have an open dialogue with my sisters and that there are not any secrets between us.