Last year, I made the biggest mistake of my life and then the mistake grew because of a secret I made to attempt to hide my mistake.
It all began mid-afternoon when I was rushing around my house after my practice to get ready to go to a NHS Induction for my boyfriend. I was running late causing me to speed on the way there. Then the blue lights appeared. A cop had pulled out behind me from out of thin air. Tears started to form in my eyes, thoughts running a million miles an hour, as I slowed my car to zero while pulling over.
The cop had not even made conversation with me like I had expected. He just trotted up asked for my license and insurance and went back to his car. It felt like hours sitting there in my car. I was worried about telling my parents, worried to what was going to happen next, worried I would be late, just worried. Eventually, the cop came back handed me a ticket and before walking away again he said in a monotone deep voice, “have a good day miss”. My vision become blurry as tears poured down my face while reading the ticket. I took deep breathes to calm myself and drove to where I was supposed to go, trying to avoid the problem.
At the NHS ceremony my mind was all over the place. I could not focus. I just had thoughts and stories running through my mind. After the ceremony, I told my boyfriend I had something important to tell him. We sat down in my car and I immediately started crying again, I couldn’t speak. I just handed him the envelope with the ticket inside. There was a lot of tears from that point on. Telling people was the hardest part. Which is why I decided to try to keep it a secret. Making my mistake even larger.
Once I realized I made my mistake worse it was almost half a year later. It felt amazing to just get that secret out. Surprisingly, people understood why I did what I did. No one should have to feel alone and have a secret eat them up for a long period of time.
I now understand that I was pulled over that day. I learned a few lessons from that day. Even though I thought my mistake would ruin my reputation of that “good smart girl” my friends understood why I never told them until half a year later. It was hard to keep that secret for so long and I should have never kept it a secret because true friends are supportive of your mistakes and they will do whatever it takes to help you learn from them.
5 Comments
This is really good! How do you think you would have felt if you told everyone right away? I 100% agree with how you hid it because I would probably do the same. What did your parents think about it?
I dont blame you for keeping this secret. Though I hope you dont feel ashamed about this mistake either. Though I do have to ask, if you wanted to keep this a secret why did you end up telling everyone? Again I wouldn’t worry about this, its a little mistake and I dont think people look at you differently. Keep being you Maeg!
I have to say, you did very well at keeping this a secret. I remember seeing you on that day at the Induction, and I never would have suspected that anything had happened.
I get why keeping the ticket a secret. Don’t worry about it ruining your reputation because ultimately you just have to not give a care sometimes. I don’t understand why you would keep it secret and then post it on here for everybody to see but if I or anybody else was late to something they would probably speed too so don’t feel bad about it.
I get that reputation is very important to people, and when something like this happens, all you can think about is things like “what are my friends going to say”, “what are my parents going to say”, etc. This world we live in, we are always so focused on what others think, and I think that was more of your worry than actually getting the speeding ticket. I completely understand what you were feeling.