Happy BlogSecret Day!

It's BlogSecret day. Inspired my the immortal PostSecret, (www.postsecret.blogspot.com), BlogSecret is run by Nilsa (www.newsomi.blogspot.com), who has collected secrets from more than 70 blogs, and exchanged them. Every blogger who participated, including me, submitted a secret and recieved one in return. We are to post the other person's secret on our blog, and somewhere, out there, is ours.

So here, unedited, is someone's secret. All I know about this secret is that it was (presumably) written by a human. Though not, in this case, me. The secret is everything between the quotation marks.

"I've racked my brain for days trying to think of what my secret would be. I'm not a very secretive person in the sense that I have a lot to hide so this was pretty difficult. I'm a quiet person and I pretty much keep to myself and those I'm close with, so naturally I don't go parading stuff around. People make mistakes. It's human nature, right? Everyone has to have a something. I eventually realized the something about me, that I'm very embarrassed of. For a big part of my youth, I was a kleptomaniac.
 
I'm not talking about gum from the gas station. I'm talking about cd's, (a lot of) clothes from major retail stores, and basically anything I could get away with. Hostessing at a restaurant was the first job I'd ever had, and believe it or not, when women would accidentally leave their purses at the tables, they were left at the hostess stand to be kept "safe". So no one would steal them. Well, guess what I did? I went through them, and checked for money. I wish I would have gotten caught. I would literally steal $100 worth of panties from a store in 10 minutes tops. I would get loads of clothes and tell my parents my friend's let me "borrow" them. Why couldn't I get caught? I always told myself, "Well, I'm under 18, the most that can happen is community service, and hey - it can't be that bad!". I stole cheap jewelry from cheap little teeny stores. I stole make up from pharmacies. I would take a big bag to the mall, and shove stuff in it while hiding it in the rack, so no one can see. How did nobody see?? It was about the thrill. The rush was amazing walking through the detectors and not hearing them go off.
 
I wish I could have slapped my young ass into the future. I wish I would have known how stupid I was being and how much trouble I most likely caused for those businesses. Seeing a lot of my friends at the time get caught and get in major trouble curbed my appetite for theft. Thank God. Growing up and maturing made me realize how wrong it is.
 
I am such an honest and trustworthy person. I am so loyal, and caring and compassionate. I honestly do not know where that phase in my life came from. I believe it was because I wanted to fit in. My family hasn't ever been a financially comfortable family, and so I felt that was the only way to get the things I wanted, like my friends had.  I don't really want people to know this fact about me, because it's not who I am, and I would never want anyone to feel like they couldn't trust me."