In my bedroom, buried in a pile of papers is a questionnaire labeled "The Marriage Expectation Inventory." Each question is answered in neatly printed block letters in purple ink. After nearly a decade and a half, the ink has started to bleed through the pages and on the reverse of each page are the blurry ghosts of letters in a screaming fuchsia.

On the line beneath "What is the greatest weakness you bring to your marriage?" I've printed, "Jealousy/insecurity," which is an interesting answer given what happened in our marriage in the years after I completed the questionnaire. At the time, I wouldn't allow myself to admit that I wasn't comfortable with my husband's behavior toward women, so I thought there must be something wrong with me for being uncomfortable about it. I wasn't worried that he might find himself involved with another woman because, oh, say, he was looking to get involved with other women, but because I was lacking in the confidence necessary to fully believe the fantasy that he wouldn't.

This weekend we were out at the park with our kids when a woman approached us and complimented Janie's curls, a compliment we hear, oh, roughly, once a minute every time Janie walks anywhere outside our home. Janie whispered "thank you" while looking at her toes and then ran off to play. Mark and I sat down on a bench and a few minutes later the same woman came over, sat down next to Mark and began chatting.

The odd thing was, unlike most moms at the park, she didn't chat about her children. She chatted briefly about her own physical attractiveness and her availability for a relationship. Then, a few awkward moments later, she left.

A decade ago, Mark would have had her number at the end of the conversation or would have given her his. She would be one of his new friends, someone to keep in flirtatious contact with and maybe have an affair with. And I would have gone home furiously angry at him and hating her, but most of all mad at myself for being so insecure that I couldn't trust the husband who clearly loved me. I would have tried to keep all that in until it exploded out at Mark. We would have fought about it. He would have assured me he loved me and it was just my jealous mind playing tricks on me.

This time around, I thought of that questionnaire and laughed. That woman's conversation crossed some invisible line of intimacy and it made both Mark and me uncomfortable. I can identify the exact words and the exact moments that brought up those feelings of discomfort for me. I can talk to my husband about it without contemptuously berating him for any part in it. And I can recognize that it's not helpful to dismiss my feelings as the delusions of an insanely jealous or insecure mind. But then again, it never was.

I was going to write this post about Facebook.  And Privacy.  And Privacy's evil twin, Secrecy.  And how when we say Privacy, we often really mean Secrecy.  Because not only do well-intentioned but befuddled people confuse the two, but addicts and other evil-doers also (gasp!) use the sacred name of Privacy as a mask for the nasty, putrid character of Secrecy.

I was going to tell you to learn to recognize Secrecy. (It's the one with the goatee.  Oh, and also the one you've lied to someone about, explicitly or implicitly.)  And I was going to ask you to think carefully about whether you are really, really talking about nice, clean-shaven Privacy or if you are actually sporting evil facial hair and hiding from people for fear of being judged.  And that being worried about how it will look if people know that you are who you are is not Privacy, it's illness. And I was going to tell you to live well and without secrets.  And not be both so scared and so freaking judgmental.  And if you live with secrets anyway (you devious person!), then Deal With It if you are outed.  Because it's your fault for having them.

And as for Privacy online (or Secrecy online for that matter), I was going to inform you that it's an illusion.  Nothing on the Internet is really private; it's on millions of computers around the world, forever.  If it's truly private, don't put it out there or at least recognize the risks, because demanding Privacy online is the equivalent of yelling at people for walking into a public restroom while you're using it with all the doors wide open.  Good, honest, non-goatee wearing Privacy is what the confines of our own Real Life are about. (It's all the stuff I don't post on the Internet. Whatever that is.) *

And I was going to tell you all this as someone whose life and marriage has been marred by secrets, so that I can see the difference between Privacy and Secrecy in the big, ugly gash burned through the middle of my existence.  And as someone who has this secret blog with a secret identity.  And who litters the Internet with posts about whole bunches of stuff that, really, I'd rather people in my Real Life didn't know.  All of which makes me one of the World's Experts on Privacy, Secrecy and Stuff Not to Post on the Internet.

But as I was writing that post, being all opinionated and you'ing you about how to do stuff right, you whiny and incompetent Facebook users, I saw that all that stuff about you was (surprise!) really stuff about me.  And not just stuff about me, but putting all my worst fears and worst character defects right out there in your face.  I mean, really, that kind of bossy, judgmental, know-it-all-ism -- telling you about how you shouldn't be bossy or judgmental because it makes me have to deal with my uncomfortable feelings about Secrecy and Privacy and how they've gotten all mixed up in my life to the point where it makes me want to punch them both square in the nose -- that's me at my total worst.  And that is the very kind of secret I shouldn't post on the Internet.

A few days ago, a columnist I generally like wrote a satirical piece on sex addiction rehab (one I won't link to here, due to its triggering nature). He's a liberal columnist, so the comments were populated with lots of LOLs and virtual eye rolling at the concept of sex addiction as a creation of the religious right: people who are uptight about and don't know how to enjoy sex. There was lots of mocking of the "higher power" concept, lots of atheists sneering at the superstitious nonsense that is God.

Of course, the conservative flip side of the "sex addiction is a joke" coin is to sneer at therapists: people who are forever trying to write off weakness and lack of willpower as "diseases" in order to bilk people out of money.  Either way, treatment for sex addiction is seen as misguided and useless: so called "sex addicts" either "just" need to loosen up and learn to accept and enjoy their sexuality or "just" need to have more willpower and moral fortitude.

And either way, as someone married to a sex addict, it can be both hurtful and maddening to feel the world is ringed around us in a circle, pointing and laughing, saying that we've been duped when, for the first time, we feel we're seeing clearly. It's one of those things that is likely to draw me back into that crazy place I used to occupy: where, like a six-year-old, I yell "NO!" at someone else's "Yes!" only to have them yell "Yes!" back at me in an endless cycle; where I feel panicked and crazy, as if someone's telling me the sky is red when I see it's blue; where I spend my time and energy fruitlessly trying to convince someone else that they're wrong so that I can feel right again.

I wanted (desperately) to pull out my credentials and yell into the comments section, "Mark and I weren't some crazy, uptight religious fanatics who just couldn't embrace our sexuality!  And I'm not some uptight, frigid wife who can't please her man!  I was a really good atheist who really loves sex!"  As if the columnist, or any of the commenters, would read that and suddenly say, "Oh, some random stranger on the Internet says that wasn't her experience. Now I've totally changed my view on sex addiction!" rather than, "I bet she actually sucks in bed and her husband is an asshole."

Deep breath.  Step 1.  I am powerless over other people.  I am powerless to change their perceptions of me.  And trying to do so anyway makes my life unmanageable.  Followed by Step 2.  Help from that much maligned higher power.

I didn't leave the comment.  I stopped reading, made the column disappear in a flash of electrons with the click of my mouse and I did something I never used to do before.  I prayed.  "God, let me see the world through your eyes.  Let me not be threatened by people whose experiences are different.  When I mock others, I am usually scared and hurting.  In every place that this columnist and his readers are scared and hurting too, open their hearts to love and peace.  Help me on my journey, and help all of them follow the path they need to, so that we can find love and understanding for each other."

In the past, I wouldn't have prayed because my God is not a separate being who controls the world, but I've found that prayer isn't (as I used to think) some useless, crazy, superstitious ritual predicated on achieving results with the help of a supernatural power.  Prayer is a tool I use to ground myself, open my own heart and let go of my own pain, fear and anger.  Prayer is a way of connecting to my higher power, my better nature, my Buddha nature, the God part inside me.  Prayer is a way of feeling love and compassion and connection to others, rather than distance and anger and fear and resentment.  When I pray for someone who requests my prayers, it connects us, and lifts us both up.  When I pray (quietly, secretly) for someone who doesn't request it, it helps me love and forgive.  I've learned that even if prayer never produces any tangible results in the world, it's not useless -- not to me -- because the purpose isn't to change the world to get what I want, it's to help me be in line with and at peace with what is.

As I write this, I have a cup of tea beside me, and I am trying to get myself to drink it.  I'm not hesitating because I don't like tea or because I think it will be unpleasant.  I'm hesitating because I'm trying to drink it out of a Pyrex measuring cup, which feels... Uncomfortable.  Weird.  Challenging.

You see, my mugs were all dirty and I had forgotten to start the dishwasher.  Now sure, I could have hand washed a mug, but why not use the more readily available measuring cup?  It has a handle.  It can hold hot liquids.  It's no heavier or more unwieldy than some of my beloved oversized mugs.  But I recoiled a bit at the thought.  Was it sanitary? I wondered.  Um, yes.  It's been through the same dishwasher as the mugs I usually drink tea from, and I use it to make lots of food that I safely and happily eat.  Would the tea taste ok?  Why wouldn't it; the measuring cup is just glass, and I drink out of glasses all the time.  But still, it just seemed... Wrong.

Of course, my son Austen is very familiar with this sensation.  Austen (as those of you who visit regularly may know) is autistic and has to eat his yogurt with a plastic spoon.  It can't be silverware, because those spoons are heavier and will (if left in the yogurt container) sometimes tip the carton.  Disaster!  But even among plastic spoons, not all spoons are created equal.  Austen's plastic spoons must be clear plastic, and not just any clear plastic; they must be the kind I buy (in bulk) from our local grocery.

This has been frustrating.  I've carried a lingering resentment over it.  After all, I once forgot to pack a spoon in his lunch, and the school called.  Austen completely refused to eat lunch without that damn spoon.  The school has plastic spoons of course, but they are white, not clear.  He insisted on a clear spoon.  So, the teachers looked through their own lunches and his classmates lunches for one to trade, but their clear spoons weren't the same brand as our clear spoons.  Their clear spoons had little swirls on the handles, making them totally different.  And because he couldn't eat his yogurt, he couldn't eat anything.  He was stuck on yogurt and couldn't get past that to the rest of lunch.

So, I ended up driving a package of spoons over to school, muttering to myself the whole time, "A spoon's a spoon, damn it!  Why does it have to be this spoon?  There are a hundred spoons at school.  There are even clear plastic spoons at school.  For crying out loud you don't even need a spoon.  You could drink it.  Or lick it off your fingers!  Why do you have to eat the yogurt with this particular type of spoon?!"

But I know why.  Autistic engineer and author Temple Grandin explained it in her recent interview on NPR when she said, "If I say to you, 'Think about a church steeple,' I only see specific ones and I can tell you exactly where they're at. And I was shocked to find out that most of the people see a generalized sort of vague, generalized, generic steeple. For me there's no generalized one. There's only lots of different specific ones."  There is no Platonic ideal of a spoon in Austen's mind, there are only specific spoons.

And I can say that's crazy and troublesome and that I just don't get why it makes eating yogurt at school impossible some days.  I can say that, that is, until I sit here unable to drink out of a clearly very mug-like object, complete with a handle and an ability to hold hot liquids simply because it doesn't fit my idea of what one ought to drink tea from.

One day, early in his recovery work around sex addiction, Mark and I were standing in line at the grocery store, when I commented on a headline on one of the news magazines.  "I can't look," Mark said.

"What?"

"It's not good for me.  Those magazine and tabloid covers are awful.  I hate the grocery store checkout.  There's no place I can safely look."

I hadn't thought about it before, at least not in terms of recovery.

Most of the magazines were insipid and pandered to the worst in people, but when I wasn't tuning them out, I was mocking them.  I never thought of them as particularly worrisome or hurtful, at least not to me, since I wasn't threatened by (or aspiring to be) anyone who might be on the cover.  But that changed as soon as the first sex scandal hit the shelves (which, of course, didn't take long).

There would be pictures on the tabloid covers of the injured spouse, shell shocked or shying away from cameras.  And it would remind me of that very first day after disclosure when Mark and I drove to a friend's house to drop our son Austen off while we went to meet with a therapist.  I stood next to the car, wearing sunglasses to hide eyes that were nearly swollen shut with crying, and waved to them while Mark walked Austen into the house because I knew I couldn't speak coherently to anyone right then.

There would be the insinuations that it was somehow partly her fault and the implication that she did something wrong: that she wasn't sexy enough or was too cold or too demanding.  (And of course, there would be Cosmo right on the next rack with sex and beauty tips to make sure you wouldn't make the same mistake.)  I'd stand in line wanting to scream, "I did EVERYTHING to make my husband happy, and he hurt me anyway.  It's not my fault that my husband lied rather than deal directly with his problems.  And it's not her fault that her husband lied either."  I suddenly became a huge fan and staunch defender of Jennifer Aniston, whom I'd never particularly cared for before.

There would be criticism for her anger or her lack of it.  And I'd think of how I'd hit Mark until the thought it was making him feel better made me stop.  And how I stumbled through the following days and weeks with no real thought, blindly and automatically following some formula that was set before me for what I needed to do, waiting for the hurt to stop.

Then there would also be the picture of the mistress, always looking sultry, scantily clad and completely unrepentant (in fact often stating that she was unrepentant).  And I'd think of the women who had contributed to my pain and the near destruction of my marriage with white hot rage and hatred in my heart.  I'd feel betrayed by them as much as by my husband, and I'd spin into fantasies about how to inflict the kind of pain upon them that they'd inflicted on me.  Sometimes I'd skim the news magazines looking hopefully for their names among the victims of terrorist attacks.

And of course, there would be the husbands, sometimes with wicked grins as they left their wives for the other woman and sometimes sorrowfully begging forgiveness in an attempt to save their images, their careers, their marriages.  And I'd feel the same mix of anger and confusion and pity that my own husband inspired in me at the time.

And even when there were no sex scandals, it was still all about how I ought to do my makeup or wear my clothes or eat or cook or weigh or act in bed to ensure that what had happened to me wouldn't happen to me.  And I could only stand there knowing I'd done it all and it hadn't protected me from the same pain that periodically splashed across the tabloid covers.

The supermarket checkout line became a gamut I had to run rather than a fun distraction from the boredom of waiting in line.  I started averting my eyes just the way Mark did.  I ordered more food deliveries and spent more time shopping at specialty stores that didn't stock the usual mix of gossip rags and "women's" magazines.

Six years in to recovery, the magazines aren't the same trigger for me that they used to be and I see the players in the drama a little differently, with less (but not always no) anger and more sympathy all around.  I don't avoid the grocery store and I don't generally avert my eyes from the news magazines just because Cosmo or the Enquirer are up there being all awful.  But I still don't seek them out when there is a sex scandal, because, especially if I'm tired or hungry or stressed, I know I'm prone to fall back into old thought patterns and I may not be above the temptation to take up a Sharpie and ink out some of the teeth on Tiger Woods' mistresses.

Sometimes people ask me (and frankly, sometimes I ask myself) how I went from being very vocal in my rejection of God to someone who now talks about God all the damn time. The short and simple answer is: 12 Step recovery (which is probably one of the reasons people like me -- or at least like the me I used to be -- find 12 Step scary). The long answer is, well, the accumulation of every tiny moment in a lifetime, which makes it both too long to tell and nothing to tell at all. But in all of the tiny moments that even the answer "12 Step" holds, there are the signposts along the way: the times when everything shifted and changed, in nearly as dramatic (but not as painful) a way as they did when I found out about my husband's addiction. Sometimes I put those together for myself into some story of change.

When I was young and asked why I had to go to church when I didn't believe, my mother said, "I didn't used to like going either, but when things in my life got hard, I found the rituals comforting. I want you to have some foundation in religion, something you can go back to when you need it." So, standing in the bedroom of our old home, the place we lived when I found out about my Mark's sex addiction, I told Mark that I felt like God was trying to break me, like taming a wild horse. God was going to heap woes on me like some mirror Job, until I was so broken down from famines and locust plagues that I would have no choice but to go tamely back to the church, just as my mother had said I would. But I was not going to be broken by God.

Was it months later or a year? At some point, still weighed down with hurt, having been stung yet again by something Mark had said or done, I wept alone in our room and tried to meditate, when the faltering thought came to me that maybe this was it, maybe I should pray. And a voice inside me told me I didn't believe in God, and I felt comforted by the higher power I couldn't and wouldn't call God.

The years passed, and although I didn't quite lose my bitterness or resentment, I lost my fear that I might somehow end up back in the arms of the church that hurt me. I began to see that having spirituality in my life didn't mean I had to have religion in my life if that didn't help me. I began the search for something to call that spiritual connection, and with my fear of the church gone, my fear of the word God began to leave me too. Intellectually, I began to explore the idea that maybe it was a word I could use as a shorthand for something in my life that was beyond words.

By the time I started working the 12 Steps, I felt I had already come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and had lost my resistance to the word God. I don't know that I expected much to change, and yet, Step 7 (in which we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings) shattered me all over again. Prayer wasn't something that fit well with my conception of what my God is and what my God is not and healthy humility wasn't something that had been a part of my experience. And yet, kneeling down in my bedroom facing a wall, hung up on all of these ideas and unable to ask God for help, in a sudden flash like a ray of sunshine breaking through cloud, I was inspired to ask God for help asking for help. In that moment, as I cried and begged for help, I felt something melt away, something new form and my connection with what I called God strengthen beyond anything I ever felt or expected.

So, when I reached Step 12, I had to admit that I had had a spiritual awakening, just as that Step promised. And I went off to carry the message, and started talking about God all the damn time too.

A little less than a year ago, I moved my blog to its own URL, and when I did so, I had the opportunity to reread many of my old posts as I updated broken links (still not all fixed, by the way). As I did, I noticed that, whether I wrote about them explicitly or not, I could see the phases I went through, like rings on a tree: here was the fire that burned my bark; here was a season rich with rain; here was mild and pleasant weather; here was the drought that left me parched. With each ring, my focus became a little bit more clear and I got a little bit better at knowing what material I could share with a large and diverse audience in a healthy way.

When I first started blogging, I shared much more broadly than I do now. I wrote about my extended family and my friends (most of whom didn't know about the blog). I wrote about situations I was struggling with and people with whom I was angry. I shared my opinions about politics and celebrities. I speculated about sex addiction in the news. I tried to answer any and all questions ("try" being the operative word, as I'll admit that some of those questions are still sitting in my inbox, waiting).

But gradually, as more people started reading and as I grew and changed myself, my focus changed. I felt less comfortable putting friends and family members out there without their knowledge, even when I was focusing on my own response to them or telling my story as it related to them. And I found it less and less helpful and healthy to share my current struggles, emotions or opinions in such a broad forum. I still do from time to time, but I do it less often and less pointedly than I once did.

I began to recognize that when I get a tight feeling in my chest as I'm writing — when I vent, or rant, or try hard to get a good laugh, or struggle to find a way to change people or force them to understand me — I'm likely to feel awful afterwards. I started to key in to when I heard that critical little voice in my head saying "but..." or "you're wrong" or "you're crazy." I'd notice how I'd fuss and fuss to get the words right so that people wouldn't "misunderstand" me, knowing what I really wanted was to be able to use my words to bully any difference into submission. And almost inevitably my anger or uncertainty or sarcasm or desperate need to have everyone agree with me would trigger someone, which would in turn trigger me.

In 12 Step we talk about sharing our "experience, strength and hope." That is: what happened to us in the past, how we got through it and the hope and faith we now have for the future. And as I look at those tree rings of writing drawing in over the years, I notice that the focus I'm moving toward is exactly that: experience, strength, hope. When I'm able to share from that place, even if I'm ashamed of what I've done and scared (often very much so!) of how people will perceive me, I'm able to feel good about what I'm doing. In moving away from focusing on others or on my resentment and anger or on the things (and people and opinions) I can't change, I'm more likely to be of service to others, to make progress myself and to do no harm.

But never fear, since I'm about progress, not perfection, I'm still likely to slip up and be a smart ass or gossip or boss people who are being wrong (that is, anyone who doesn't agree with me). You know, just to keep things entertaining.

When I found out about my husband's sexual addiction, it felt like my emotional landscape faded from bright vivid color to monochrome shades of black and grey. I had three primary emotional settings: fear, anger (shading into full on rage) and heartbreaking sadness. And I'd display these by alternating between screaming, crying and sitting mute and paralyzed. My early experiences with 12 Step meetings were with partners of sex addicts who were in much the same state I was. There was a lot of anger and hurt in that musty little church room, and it was hard, as I slowly shed my own anger and hurt to see other people still hurting.

Of course, it would be nice to say that I felt for them and my sympathy for their pain tore at me. But that's not true at all. Everyone seemed to piss me off, and I was just oozing resentments. I went from being angry and frustrated at my husband to wanting to fix everyone else in the room. Why couldn't they just get over it already? It was so infuriating to listen to them go on about their awful partners without ever seeing how awful they were being. Clearly, they were doing recovery wrong.

So I stopped going. For about four years.

In the six months since I've returned to meetings, I've noticed that there's been a change: that triggered feeling I used to have has slipped away. Now, maybe these new meetings are healthier than my old ones — the format and philosophy of this group are certainly a much better fit for me — but I know that's not the whole story. After all, the newcomers who walk in almost always present that same bleak emotional landscape that I did: fear, anger, crushing sadness — they cry, they rage at the addict in their lives, they live in terror of the next blow the future may bring — but instead of feeling frustrated, I feel present, able to sympathize and empathize without getting swept away by my emotions. I'm able to remember those bleak days, without fearing that rich colors of my own world will fade away again.

I'm recognizing that the break I took, while I did it for a lot of negative reasons, did turn out to be a healthy one. When my own raw places were just starting to heal, going to meetings full of so much hurt and rage felt like ripping the scab off my wounds. I was too close to those hurts myself to be able to look back on them with anything approaching serenity. Now that those wounds have had time to heal, I find I'm much better able to accept others where they are rather than needing everyone else to feel better so that I can escape my own pain.

Five months ago, after a four and a half year hiatus, I once again started attending a 12 Step group for partners of sex addicts. I had just finished working the Steps with an online group and my intention was to join the group and work the Steps in this group the good old-fashioned way, with a real life sponsor. However, the group I'm attending, which is the best fit both for my schedule and my philosophical leanings, is brand-new and tiny. There are people in the group who have worked the Steps in other programs before, but no one who has worked them in this group, specifically around sexual codependency, and so no one who would be able to act as my sponsor.

We tell folks in our group that they have a few options when it comes to sponsorship: they can drive to a larger meeting significantly further away to look for a sponsor, they can try to work the Steps with a partner or a group from our meeting, they can try to find a sponsor through online or telephone meetings. Each of those options presented its own problems for me. Having worked the Steps already in a non-traditional manner, I'd come into the meeting determined to have a real life sponsor, which meant I wasn't interested in two of the options available. However, I also wasn't willing to take on another meeting, further away, in order to try to find someone local to work with.

So, I spent some time stewing in my frustration and resentment. I aimed some at my program, grumbling, "Why do 12 Step groups have to make it so freaking hard to find a sponsor? Why aren't there more tools in place to help people connect with potential sponsors?" (After all, I'd spent a year in the last program without ever finding one or even really figuring out what one was.) And I aimed a lot at myself, "I should have tried harder to figure out how sponsorship works. Why haven't I been willing to work harder to find someone? Doesn't my recovery mean more to me? If I really valued it, would I be complaining about having to drive a few hours once a week? No one's even going to want to sponsor someone who lacks commitment the way I do."

Then, last week, I went to a workshop on building successful meetings, and one of the characteristics we talked about a great deal was working the Steps. And I realized I'm (once again) in a 12 Step meeting in which almost no one is actually working the Steps. We have no sponsors and little hope of new sponsors because so few people are able to work the Steps. This renewed my commitment to work the Steps again myself, and that renewed commitment helped me see that I need to let go of my desire to work the Steps a certain way. Whatever I (or others) think I "should" be willing and able to do, I'm not ready to go through the effort it will take me to find a sponsor outside the group. And that's ok. Much like my failure to go to the gym, it doesn't mean I'm lazy or not committed or a bad person. It simply means I've been trying to approach the problem based on where I want to be rather than where I am; I haven't been accepting of where I am right now.

So, in the next few weeks, I'll be talking to people in my group about the possibility of partnering up of working the Steps as a group. That way our group will build a pool of potential sponsors, and I can try to work the Steps with a sponsor the next time around.

I am getting better at saying no, when I mean no, but it's still an area where I have a lot of work to do. Saying "yes" to requests is like a reflex to me. Tap my knee and my foot bounces up, ask me for help and I say, "Yes." Oops. Wait. Let me think about that. The "yes" is so deeply ingrained that I don't always see it...

I learned early on that "no" was not an acceptable answer, at least not if people pleasing me wanted to continue to please people. The folks in my life would give lip service to saying no — "You should get your priorities straight and learn how to say no" — but the message that rubbed itself into me was: "You should learn how to say no to other people, but not me" or maybe "You should learn how to handle saying yes to everyone else and no to yourself." This meant "I can do anything if I want to" warped itself years ago into "I should be able to do everything if I just try hard enough." And with that came an endless string of yeses.

In my senior year of high school, I was taking a full load of courses, most of them for college credit. I was applying to colleges. I was studying for SAT exams. I was participating in extracurricular activities and doing part-time and volunteer work. I was trying to enjoy the last little bit of time left I had with the friends who were like a second family to me. And through it all I was getting straight A's, right at the top of my class. If someone gave me an assignment or asked me to do something, like a good young codependent/workaholic, I did what it took (at whatever hidden cost to my physical, emotional and mental health) to get the job done.

One of the classes on my schedule that year was Advanced European History, a class I'd been looking forward to taking (yes, I was a nerdy child) after enjoying the introductory level of same subject a few years earlier with a different teacher. But it wasn't long before I found I hated both the class and the teacher. (Hated isn't too strong a word here either; over twenty years later, I ended up having to put that teacher on my resentment list when I was working on my Fourth Step.) The cost of being in the class — the drain on my time, energy, resources and emotions — just wasn't worth it to me. Recognizing my limits (in a surprisingly good and healthy way), I decided to drop the class.

The teacher kept me after class and said (in what was supposed to be a motivating way) that he knew I could handle the work, and dropping the class was just an indication that I was lazy. The criticism stung, as only criticisms that strike a nice, rich vein of insecurity can. Here I was, by all external measures an excellent student and citizen, working each day from dawn to dusk, and I really, deep down did feel like it would be lazy to take care of myself by dropping this one class. I hated that teacher because I thought he saw right through to the idle, worthless core of my being. And I can hear that voice whispering even today whenever I sit down, whenever I stop, whenever I say no: "Work harder, do better. You're just not trying hard enough. If you tried harder, if you were better, you wouldn't need to stop, to rest or to say no."

So, learning how to say "no" doesn't mean learning to form the word and let it float off my lips; it means learning to cope with people pushing back on my boundaries. It means learning to withstand the firestorm of criticism that can follow. It means learning to be completely free from the need for external validation. It means learning to be enough for myself no matter what anyone thinks of what I do. It means being ok with the possibility (or reality) of losing awards and accolades and jobs and promotions, with losing social standing and the respect of my peer group, with losing friends and family members. It means being ok with "losing." It means finding my truth and knowing how to live in it.