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I despise keeping the secrets of my ex-boyfriends.  Invariably, they have each confessed something to me, and I hold it in my memory, wishing I could tell someone, but feeling some sort of loyalty to the promise implied by love no longer felt; the promise that I would keep the secrets forever.

I suppose it bothers me because they promised to love me forever, and, clearly, that didn't work out.  To whom should I confess these secrets?  Certainly not a new boyfriend, if there even were one.  He would not understand.  These secrets are big, not in the scope of the world, but rather in terms of their intimacy.  How can I stand to keep their secrets?

I can't.  I will confess two of them now from from the worst boyfriend I ever had.  He was abusive, and I barely escaped him with my self intact.  I was in high school and he was only my second boyfriend ever, so I hope you can forgive me for my idiocy.  We'll call him Peter.  Peter, I can see now, was a sociopath.  He lied, and lied and lied to everyone, and especially to me.  He lied to his mother, he lied to his step-father, and he lied to himself.  He was stupid, but oh, so clever.  He could manipulate.  He had no emotions of his own, but he could twist yours into knots.  He was without remorse, but he could make you feel bad about anything.  He was without conscience and would drag anyone down into the darkness with him because you couldn't believe anyone could be so evil.  He would hold me down when I said no and he'd do it anyway.  He would hit me in the leg, though I wished and wished he'd hit me in the face so I'd have a "valid" excuse to escape.  He followed me and questioned me and lied to the police and stole and lied and separated me from my friends and family.  You can see why I don't feel bad revealing Peter's secrets.

Peter has two related secrets.  One: he once reached into the toilet to squash his own poop with his hands to make it look like diarrhea, so he could get out of going to work at Burger King.  Two: he faked abdominal pain to get out of going to school, but he faked it hard and couldn't back down, so his mother, a nurse, took him to the hospital.  He doubled down on his lie and kept faking for the doctors who performed a needless appendectomy.  Peter was a committed liar.  Pity the poor high school girl, so innocent and desperate to please and be liked.  Pity her carrying the sociopath's secrets and her own hidden hurts.