Journal Topic: Sharing

What are some of the things you would not share with anyone, no matter what?

As usual, there are at least two different ways to answer this question.

Firstly, there are many things I wouldn't share with anyone, and the reason for that is always hygienic. I would never share my toothbrush, my deodorant, or my contacts. Eye drops are also very bad to share with others, but I have done it when a friend really needed it. Lipstick and lip gloss are very bad things to share with others. Basically anything that was meant for a single person's use, I wouldn't want to share with another person. I tend to have extras of these items in my house in case people come over and forget them. I also don't believe in giving away someone else's stuff, so if someone let me borrow something or if something belongs to someone else, I wouldn't share it with anyone.

But the other way to answer would be when someone shares something with me, when would I share it with others. I've thought about this a great deal in my life, because people tend to tell me things I really shouldn't know. For some reason, people think of me as a trustworthy sound board, someone they can just tell secrets and opinions to, and I won't reveal these things to others. This is true, of course. If someone shares a secret with me, I feel honor-bound to keep that secret. And with the exception of a couple of times when I was very young and a secret slipped out before I thought about it, I've been very good about keeping secrets. I can't stand a person who goes off and shares something that I've shared with them in confidence. And since this has been done to me several times in my life, especially in my career (I still don't believe adults behave that way) I am very careful about not doing that to other people.