Loose Lips Sink Ships

I've never been able to keep my mouth shut. It's a rather famous family story that when my brother made the eighth grade basketball team, he left me home alone to go celebrate with his best friend Andrew and admonished me not to tell my mother when she arrived home. But when the time came, try as I might, I couldn't lie, my lips quirking up on both sides as I tried to sound miserable and say that he hadn't made the team. I don' remember what Justin said when he found at I'd told - I guess he knew better the next time.

If I were in Harry Potter, I'd never be anyone's secret-keeper. Not because I'm not loyal. On the contrary: I'm loyal to a fault, more willing than most to sacrifice myself for the comfort of others. But what I know and - possibly more intensely - what I feel, I must tell. And even when I have the best intentions of not telling, the words come tumbling out of my mouth before I even know what's happening.

Perhaps all the secretiveness was taken up by my sister, who is classically trained in evasion tactics. If she has no interest in telling you something, she is not easily tricked into doing so. I, on other hand, will tell my life's secrets with only the slightest provocation. I find myself telling people things all the time that I will think only later that I should've kept to myself.

I wish I were more secretive and mysterious, but I am the proverbial open book. I seem to have no control over the emotions that play across my face, and when I try to exert control, it's so unnatural that people can easily discern that I'm trying to hide something. And when one word would do, I overcompensate with ten. I'm like Bridget Jones with my chronic verbal diarrhea.

Even when I admonish myself again and again and again that I will not say something aloud, I will inevitably end up scolding myself inwardly when I'm mid-story with someone. And not a lover of conflict, I often find myself telling the wrong things to the wrong people. In order to exorcise myself of what I'm feeling, I tell Person A when I should really be addressing things with Person B. Some people suffer in silence, but I find that I must suffer aloud. And one of these days, my runaway tongue is going to get me in trouble.

While some may find this sort of open-facedness charming, I find it often comes along with a fair measure of regret when I realize that I've said too much. And there is something to be said for reservation when it's appropriate, as it keeps one from being altogether inappropriate. My loose tongue instead seems to plague me. It's rather a character flaw, I find, to need to tell my story all the time. Even now, I'm wondering if I've said too much.