At one time I believed that secrets were bad.  One should aways live the kind of life that allowed for complete transparency.  If you kept a secret it probably meant that you were doing something wrong.  You should try to be clear with everyone about everything.

Truth is, it’s more complicated than that.  Sometimes not telling is the best thing to do.  Sometimes it’s the only way to protect yourself.  Because people don’t understand.  They get judgemental, they don’t listen, or they don’t care.  I would rather carry a secret safely all by myself than share it with someone who will shrug and say “whatever”.  Or someone who will argue with me.  Or someone who will misunderstand, forcing me to begin explaining something that I don’t have the energy to explain.

It takes energy to contain the secrets, but not as much as it would take if they came out.

Sometimes I don’t even want to tell someone who would listen, care, and understand.  Because if that person cares about me, and finds the facts upsetting, then I have to deal with my feelings and their feelings.  Now I feel bad for myself, and I feel bad that they feel bad about me feeling bad, etc, which creates a loop of intensifying feedback that builds until I can’t bear it.

I’m not doing anything wrong.  At least, I don’t think so.  But I’m still going to keep my feelings secret.   It’s what’s working for me now.

Things never affect me right away.  I can pretend nothing has changed for a couple of days, and then I’ll catch myself doing something abnormal.

This time, part of me has regressed to age 15, when I was desperate for male attention and approval.  I bought myself a couple of really short miniskirts, and I’ve been furtively but compulsively checking to see how many men are noticing.  It’s not a good thing, especially when they catch me looking at them looking.  It makes me feel exposed and vulnerable.

It’s embarrassing.  I have this habit of watching men’s faces too closely when I’m insecure; looking into their eyes with too much intensity and holding the stare for a few beats too long.  Then I look down, away, anywhere else, because I may as well be wearing a sticker on my forehead that says “DESPERATE”.

It’s especially bad because I’m not 15 anymore.  The 17-year-old at the grocery store checkout counter is young enough to be my son.  I don’t look my age, but I do look too old to be checking out high school boys.

I’ve been seeing my hair stylist for over a year now.  We’ve always been cool.  Last month, sitting in his chair I was aware of his hands on my head, and suddenly got all shy, wondering if he thinks I’m pretty.  Honestly!  I hate this.  Where has my confidence gone?

I have got to get a grip.

What I went through during March through June was a rite of passage.  It was a work thing, but it became personal.  I have never carried that much responsibility before.  I have never been the adult in charge, the one who everyone’s depending on; the one who is secretly terrified of failure; the one who has to figure it out on her own if she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

Forty people and a multi-million-dollar business were depending on me to get it right.  That kind of pressure, sustained for weeks on end…  I couldn’t face it all at once.  I got through by taking one small piece at a time, and trying to survive like that, in bits.  I simply could not look at the big picture.  It was too much

It’s done now, and I’m out the other side.  Crisis averted – the project was a success.  But I’m still waiting for my gears to spin down.  My feet haven’t quite touched ground yet.  My inner eye hasn’t recovered the ability to see widely, after months of chosen myopia.  I’m still missing parts of myself that I shed along the way for the sake of survival.

I miss my friends and family, but when I’m with them I’m almost too tired to speak.  Of course they ask me about the project, from genuine interest, or to be polite, but I especially don’t want to talk about that.  Don’t make me re-live it.  It’s too soon.  Let me rest.  Let me pretend for a while that it never happened, that I didn’t have to grow up that much.

I ache for the pieces of myself that I lost.  I mourn the days and weeks that were consumed by this monster job.

And yet, it has shaped me in new ways.   I have also gained.  When I’m ready to face the big picture, to turn around and see everything that I did and everything that happened, then I’ll meet the new me, with new pieces.  And I think that might be OK.

It’s definitely unhealthy.  My eyes have gotten twitchy.  I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about work, needing to get up and jot down to-do lists that might otherwise be lost by morning.  Then I can’t get back to sleep.

I’ve started to feel panicked, claustrophobic, like a prisoner in my own life.  The place where I work has no windows.  It’s possible to completely lose perspective there, to forget that life goes on outside, that just across the road is a beautiful park filled with birds, butterflies, and flowers.  I don’t even have five minutes to go out and look at it.  I can’t even go to the bathroom without four people stopping me on the way there to ask me questions or tell me what they need from me.

I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore.  I’m just this robot that works and works and works.

It’s a temporary thing.  It’s all on account of a big project that I’ve been working on, starting in January and already on the downswing.  A couple more months and I should be able to breathe again.  Still.  It’s a long time to go without breathing.

But I didn’t understand what it was to receive trust.

My mother never trusted me.  I was a straight A+ student, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and always kept her up to date on my whereabouts.  But if I was a half hour late for my curfew she’d throw a hairy fit, and yell at me that if I was going to be irresponsible she wouldn’t be surprised if I was out on the streets by this time next year, pregnant and addicted to drugs.

My first husband read my journal and then threw what he found there in my face.

I must have internalized an assumption of my basic untrustworthiness without even realizing it.  I don’t know if I’ve ever even fully trusted myself.

My husband trusts me.  He has trusted me for eight years, but I didn’t know it.  I mean, he told me that he trusted me, but I didn’t get it.  I couldn’t take it in, because I didn’t know anything about being trusted.  I thought hearing the words meant that I understood, but I didn’t understand.

Then my ex-husband contacted me and we started up an e-mail correspondence.  I told my husband about it, and he said it was OK.  I had his permission.  He trusted me.  Still, I experienced tremendous levels of anxiety.  I kept asking for more and more reassurance from my husband.  I checked in with him every time I sent an e-mail to my ex, just to make sure things hadn’t changed.  I expected him to go into my Hotmail account and read our e-mails.  I thought “I trust you” meant, you’re not getting into trouble for this today, but who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow.

But eventually, one day, it sank in.  We were having our umpteenth talk about it, and I mentioned my worry that he would read my e-mails and find them upsetting.  His brow furrowed and he asked me “Why would I waste my time doing that?  I trust you.”  And that’s when it hit me.  What trust is.  It’s not something you say to indicate that you’re willing to tolerate a behavior for the time being.  Tolerance has limits.  Trust is something else.  It’s more permanent.  It has to do with who we are at the deepest level of our relationship, not dependent on passing moods.

And the most unexpected part was how much I relaxed once I finally took in the fact that I was trusted.   I realized how exhausting it is to not be trusted, because I was constantly trying to prove my trustworthiness, just like when I used to live with my mother.  The pressure was terrible.

Now that I know he trusts me, I can finally relax.

This someone was the most important person in my life for many years.  He was instrumental in my highest-flying moments of joy, and in the worst, dark depths.  He was my best friend and my worst enemy.  In the end, he fulfilled a pattern that had been present in my life since childhood:  the ones who say that they love you are the ones that hate you most when no one else is looking.

I focused almost all my energy alternately on pleasing him and rebelling against him.  Relative to how I am now, people say that I looked smaller then, more like a ghost.  (Physically I’m the same size as I was.)   I was more of a sidekick than a wife.

I don’t blame him.  I know his past, and how it shaped him.  After the divorce, I read that two only children should never marry.  You’ve both been brought up as the centre of attention.  You never had to learn to share.  We were two only children in a battle to be at the centre.  He was dominant.  All our space was his space.  All our plans were his plans.  All our friends were his friends.

And yet, he was my best friend for twelve years.  He was my high school sweetheart.  He had some wonderful qualities.  After I left him, despite how bad things had gotten, I missed him unspeakably.  I felt as though I had chewed off my own leg to be free.

Time passed.  Close to ten years after I moved out, I have reconnected with him online.  I barely thought of him anymore by then, but it was nice to share some memories together, and catch up on news.  We started writing more often, re-kindling the friendship side of our connection.

At first it was fun and easy.  But it’s been getting more difficult for me.  The more I know him now, the more it feels like he’s a real presence in my life, the more all those unresolved feelings come floating to the surface.  There were so many things we never talked about, near the end.

Sometimes after an e-mail from him, I can’t sleep at night.  I wake at 3 am with a pounding, racing heart.  All the insecurities I thought I had outgrown are being triggered, almost as though no time has passed at all.  I thought I had forgiven him, but I had only forgotten.  Now that I’m reminded, I can time-travel back to my old self instantly.

I have to stop, look around at my new home, my new life.  I remind myself what year it is, how old I am.  I look in the mirror and see that I’m different.  As soon as I stop focusing on the now, the past snaps me back like an elastic band.

Why don’t I just cut him off again?  Same reason why I can’t sleep at night.  There are too many unresolved issues begging to come to light.  I hope that if I can weather the anxiety, we might be able to talk through some of the past, and heal it.  He has changed.  He went through his own personal hell, and it humbled him.  I can’t bear to lose him again.  I’m willing to let it be messy, difficult, and awkward.  The possibilities are worth the risks.

In the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to get re-acquainted with anxiety.  I forgot how involuntary it can be.  I could be consciously thinking about anything, even engrossed in conversation with a friend, when suddenly my ears start burning, my heart starts pounding, and I wonder if I’d better run to the bathroom because I might actually puke.

Consciously, I believe that I can handle it all.  I love my job, and I don’t resent being the manager who has to stay calm and absorb the anxieties of everyone else who needs to blow off steam during the workday.  I get satisfaction from seeing someone leave my office feeling noticeably better than when they came in.

But later, I wake up in the middle of the night with my pulse pounding in my ears, and I can’t get back to sleep without a shot of vodka.

There are other things, personal relationships, adding to the stress pile.  Nothing I can do to change that.  The relationships are what they are, and I just have to feel my way through them until they become clearer.

I’m coping by doing as little as possible on evenings and weekends.  The occasional outing to see a friend is healthy.  Otherwise, you’ll find me parked in front of the TV, giving my mind and body a neutral environment to rest in.  I told my volunteer position that I can’t take any shifts for the next few months.  I’m letting my husband do most of the housework.

I don’t anticipate any let-up in the stress for at least another few months.  But still, it’s only temporary.  I’ve survived worse.  I’ll make it through.

The secret of my equanimity?  One big factor is that I cancelled my cable TV.  Not being bombarded by non-stop advertisements and Christmas specials has made an immense difference in my ability to retain equilibrium.

I also have not:

• shopped in any malls;
• struggled to wrap gifts in fancy paper;
• decorated my home;
• felt obliged to embark on ill-fated adventures in baking;
• or otherwise disrupted my comfortable, sanity-friendly routines.

The things that I have done or have planned to mark the season are all focused on human relationships, not material stuff:

• enjoying togetherness at holiday parties;
• making donations to charity in lieu of buying gifts;
• trying karaoke for the first time with friends in a growing friendship;
• celebrating as relatives who were feuding for years kiss and make up; and
• hugging.  Lots of hugging.

I’m not worried about living up to anyone else’s standards.  I don’t have a giant to-do list before me, or an over-packed schedule.  There is room for me to breathe this holiday season, and for once I’m truly enjoying it.

He and I are a bit like Jack Sprat and his wife, reversed.  He struggles not to overeat.  I can’t seem to gain an ounce.  Granted, I do exercise more and snack less than he does, but in the final analysis most of the credit for my low BMI goes to luck.  I have skinny parents.  He doesn’t.  It’s not fair, but that’s life.

When I’m feeling good, it doesn’t matter.  My husband is a handsome man with smooth skin, a mischievous glint in his eye, and an alluring dimple when he smiles.  He also has very charismatic eyebrows.  And sexy hands.  Perfectly straight, white teeth;  a cool haircut.  Women flirt with him, and love it when he flirts with them.  His waistline isn’t big enough to overshadow all his attractive features.

Frankly, if you could give me a guarantee that my husband would live until at least the age of 85, I wouldn’t care about the bean lump.  It’s not an issue of insufficient superficial beauty.  I count my lucky stars every day that the wonderful man I married happens to be so good-looking.

However, when I’m anxious and under stress, I can’t ignore the bean lump.  It taunts me.  Bullet points from magazine articles about Metabolic Syndrome scroll across my mind’s eye like quotes along a stock ticker.  I’m sure he’s going to get diabetes.  I’m sure he’s going to die of a heart attack.  How selfish of him to abandon me through an early death!  He loves bacon more than he loves me!

Technically, he could be doing more.  He says he has “no time” to exercise, when I know he spends at least 4 hours every night playing on the computer or watching TV.  He swears off snacking for a while, and then I start finding wrappers in the garbage and unwashed plates in the sink when I get up in the morning.  When he orders a side of bacon with his brunch, I bite my tongue.

The thing is, I know he’s doing his best.  I’m not the only emotionally fragile person in this house.  He has his limits too.  While he may have time to exercise, I know that he doesn’t have the emotional stamina to deal with it.  He took up jogging for a few weeks two years ago.  Every time he came home, he talked about how much it sucked to be “that fat guy trying to run”.  Everyone else on the track was fast and athletic.  That was outside, at night, in the dark.  I can sure understand why he hasn’t been able to face a brightly lit gym.

Yes, he eats compulsively sometimes, but do I have any right to get on his case about that?  He doesn’t smoke, drink to excess, gamble, or get too wrapped up in online gaming.  His family has a history of alcoholism.  He’s had a rough past.  All things considered, if all he does is eat a whole big bag of potato chips at 2:00 am every once in a while, he’s doing pretty good.  In fact, he’s doing excellently, and I’m proud of him for coming as far as he has.

But when I’m down and nervous, all of that counts for nothing.  All I can see is his early death, the funeral, and an old age of loneliness and endless grief stretching before me.  The bean lump may as well be a tombstone hanging around his neck.

I always think that I’ve got myself under control.  I tell myself that I’m doing fine.  But my resistance slips.  Although I should know better, I justify to myself that I can make this comment, leave that article on exercise out for him to find, because it’s “for his own good”.  Then we fight.

“Do you think I don’t know that I’m fat?” he asks me sharply, wounded.

“I have to look at this” (he grabs his belly) “every day in the mirror.  I’m the one whose pants don’t fit.”  By the time I’ve realized my mistake, it’s too late.  I have failed to love him unconditionally.  I’ve basically told him that he’s not good enough.  And guess what happens when he feels bad about himself?  He eats for comfort.  He lies around more watching TV because the stress of fighting is exhausting.

He also gets that I’m trying to control him, and he doesn’t like being controlled.  What better way to rebel than by doing exactly what I don’t want him to do? 

Hello, self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hate the ugliness in my head when I fall down that hole.  I hate that I never learn, that I make the same mistake over and over again.  Once the words are out of my mouth I feel so stupid, like the biggest dolt that ever walked the face of the earth.  I’m a bad wife.  I’m a crappy friend.  I’m a mess.

Every day I try to live up to my ideal: take life as it comes, and leave the things I can’t control up to God.  Be grateful for what I have when I have it.  Don’t grasp.  Don’t presume that I can know what the future holds.  Anything could happen.  Life has surprised me more times than I can count, and the surprises are often good ones.

Or, let’s say that my worst fears will come true.  What then?  What if my husband is destined to have a heart attack and die at a young age?  Do I really want to spend our remaining days together fighting over whether or not he puts too much butter on his pancakes?  I can enjoy what I have while I have it, and be grateful for every second.  I can be open to uncomplicated joy.  I can be fully in this moment, with all of my heart, without conditions.

He’s doing his best.  I can see that.  He puts in 110% effort every day, and that has to be good enough. 

I love him so much.  I hope that we both live long, happy lives together.  But the only thing I can truly reach for and achieve is long, happy moments, right now, one breath at a time.

But that’s not how it works.  Sickness messes with my mind and my soul.  Sickness makes me depressed, anxious, weepy, frustrated, impatient, and prone to tantrums.  I remember how I felt the day before I got sick, just last week.  If I concentrate hard enough I can step into that feeling of centeredness, just for a moment.  I was living in the flow of things, letting stress slide off my shoulders even as it poured forth like an endless river.  I was keeping all the balls in the air, in a breath-taking juggling act filled with faith and grace.

Then I got sick, and it all came tumbling down. 

When I’m sick, I become frantically insecure about canceling plans and obligations.  I’m letting people down – how could I let all these people down?  I become paranoid; everyone thinks I’m faking.  What if Phil, who invited me to his birthday party for the first time this year, never invites me again?  Why bother inviting someone who cancels at the last minute?  What if my aunt, whose dinner party I missed, yells at my mother because she thinks I’m avoiding her?  Then my mother would be hurt and it would be all my fault because I made my aunt angry.

That’s how I think when I’m sick.  And it doesn’t matter that I know, I KNOW it’s stupid and all wrong.  I can’t stop feeling the fear.  These things keep me up at night.

Being sick also messes with my homeostasis.  That nice, comfy groove I got into with my sleep schedule and my balanced mealtimes?  Gone.  Blasted to smithereens, and with it, my equilibrium.  I have to sleep more to heal, but oversleeping always depresses me.

Also, sometimes, like this time, my hormones have been completely knocked for a loop.  Today I am living in the grip of PMS the likes of which I haven’t known for many a month.  I forgot how bad it could be.  I hate this feeling of hating everything, of the answer to everything being “NO!” before I even know what my options are.

I want to bite people, and not in a sexy way.

I don’t want to do anything, but I’m too restless to do nothing.

And I can’t seem to snap out of it.