I woke up this morning, muscles clenched like a fist and throat tight with anxiety, wanting to grab my son and never let him go. I crept to where he was sleeping and ran my fingers through his curls, reassuring myself he was there and safe. He'd actually been better than usual in this morning's version of my recurring nightmare; at least in this dream, I'd found him in the end.

I've had some variation on this nightmare — in which I lose one or both of my children — countless times. In a nightmare theme a few weeks ago, I'd happily, if absent-mindedly, voiced my assent to my 6-year-old daughter's trip to the mall with a friend of hers on Christmas day. Dream-hours later, when she wasn't home yet, I realized I didn't know the friend's name, address or phone number and there were no stores open on Christmas. She was gone, taken, and it was my fault.

Last night, my husband was the bad guy for a change instead of the usual villain: me. In my dream, he'd planned to go out to run some errands alone, but Austen begged to come, so the two of them went off together, but only Mark returned home, having forgotten he'd brought Austen with him. We rushed back to find him, with my dream mind running through the very real-life possibilities that Austen would not be able to communicate his needs and get help. We found Austen and he burst into tears mingled with a steady stream of anxious, repetitive shouts and questions with no answers, very much like what I'd expect of the real Austen under stress. Then the chime of my alarm woke me, still tight and panicky, and truly wanting to punch my husband, who was sleeping innocently beside me, totally unaware of what he'd been doing in my dream.

I realized, as time passed and I calmed down, that on top of the fear that I will lose my children, the sheer panic that they could be hurt or lost or worse — a fear any parent understands — there extends through all of these nightmares a different kind of fear. In each dream, at some point, I always think, "Oh, no. I'm not going to be able to find this child by myself. I have to ask someone — the store clerk, a police officer, a neighbor — for help. But if I tell them I lost my child, they are not going to want to help me. They are going to blame and judge me. They are going to tell me I didn't work hard enough and do well enough. They are going to tell me that it's my fault. And even if we find my child, they are going to think that my husband and I are such bad parents that they take our children away forever anyway." It's not just the realization that my child is missing that causes the nightmares to be so traumatic, it's the realization that my child is missing, that I might be blamed and that the problem is so big, I can't fix it by myself.

And I recognize that isolation and loneliness, that self—blame and guilt. I recognize those fears: The fear of asking for help. The fear that mistakes or weaknesses or imperfections will cause me to lose everything I love. The fear that I'm not working hard enough. The fear of judgment and of blame, and not just in and of themselves, but as agents of loss. I recognize in all of these the deep roots of addiction and codependency still present in my mind, gripping me when I sleep.

Image credit: Photo by DaveAustria.com on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

So, you know, I'm not really codependent.  (I hate that word anyway.  Sincerely I do.)  I just like to do nice things for people.  Really nice things.  Like that time in college when my boyfriend's parents were going to come for a visit and I helped out by vacuuming his carpet.  Only he wasn't actually my boyfriend, but I wanted him to be, and I didn't, technically, vacuum the carpet, I went a little overboard, which really was not my fault because I couldn't find a vacuum.

Ok, let me explain.  I was enamored of this guy I met my freshman year, and I was pretty sure that, if I just worked hard enough and did well enough, I could eventually get him to ride off into the sunset with me after which we'd live happily ever after, enjoying the ripeness of our golden years in our house with a dog and a white picket fence and grandchildren bouncing on our knees.  And one day just before his parents were due to arrive for a visit, I saw the perfect opportunity to prove my everlasting devotion and put him so deeply in my debt that he would have to consent to, if not ride off into the sunset, then at least go buy the horse.

He had tidied up his little ten foot by twelve foot room and was frowning down at the carpet remnant that covered the floor.  "Too bad I couldn't vacuum it," he said, "Oh well.  I have to leave for class.  What about you?"

"I don't have anything right now.  Is it ok if I hang out here for a little while?  I'll lock up when I leave," I said, slyly.

"Sure," he said and left for class.

After he left, I set off in search of a vacuum, thinking I'd quickly run it over his carpet as a surprise.  When I couldn't find any available (at least none that were working at the time; although I did hear tell of fabled vacuum cleaners that had been working just days before), I refused to give up.  I went back to his room, and as I surveyed it, I had a brilliant idea.  I might not be able to get up all the dirt, but I could at least make the carpet look better; I could clean the floor the way I sometimes took lint off a sweater: with tape.  So I wrapped tape, sticky side out, all around my hand, and on my hands and knees I got to work painstakingly clearing all visible debris from the carpet that no one asked me to clean.

When my soon-to-be boyfriend returned from class, I showed him the room with a flourish.  At first, he didn't notice anything, but given time (and sufficient prodding from me), he said, "Oh!  The carpet!  Great.  Thanks.  I guess you found a vacuum cleaner."  Suddenly ashamed to admit that I'd just spent the last hour all but licking his floor clean with my tongue as an act of devotion, I said, "Yes, I did.  Took like 10 seconds."

"Well, that was nice of you.  Thanks.  See you later."

Not the ticker tape parade in my honor it should have been, but I was laying that groundwork in my niceness.  (That wasn't codependent, right?  I'm pretty sure codependent would have been doing that on a much larger room he never asked me to clean.)  But folks, here's the important part: it sort of worked.  We dated for years.  And it's not my fault that we broke up because I couldn't sustain that level of working hard enough and doing well enough at things I was never asked to do or that he didn't work that hard or do that well in return.  Still, that's the kind of healthy, successful dating relationship that's totally going to get me published in Sexual Codependents Magazine Cosmo someday.

Last Monday I walked through the grocery store feeling like a weight was crushing my chest, a tight lump in my throat the only thing between me and tears. And part of me wanted to self-indulgently sit there on the linoleum floor under the flicker fluorescent lights and cry, much the same way that I'll both fear and crave the relief of vomiting during a wave of nausea. For the second time this year, a babysitter had dumped us because she found my son Austen's autistic behavior too difficult to handle.

The grocery store I was in wasn't the one closest to my home. It was an additional twenty minutes further away, because the one closest to my house was all out of strawberry Yoplait, one of the three foods Austen will eat (and not just eat reliably, but eat at all). I'd had a clerk check the stockroom and then check with the store in the next town before making the drive to the store in which I now clutched my cart wanting to cry.

It had been the sitter's first attempt at watching the kids, and I'd been satisfied that everything went just fine.  She had experience working with autistic children in the past, and both children seemed to take to her from the start.  There seemed to have been a few rough patches, but it didn't strike me that the kids or the sitter had a particularly difficult night and the sitter, even at the end of the evening, seemed interested in learning more about how to work with Austen.  But this morning I'd been informed that she did not want to come back because the job was too difficult.

Too difficult?  Is that what my life is?  Here I was having driven an extra twenty minutes each way to the grocery store because my son's eating issues are so severe, and I have a babysitter who has worked with autistic children before seeming to say to me (through her actions) that my son is worse than any of them.  Am I in another one of those situations, like living with an addict, where we start to think that everyone secretly drives raging drunk or tries to pick up prostitutes or does drugs with their kids because that's all we see, where the bizarre and unacceptable become normal?

I remembered the babysitter asking about whether Austen's behavior was better at school than at home and wondering, "Was she saying it was my fault?  Did she think if I'd worked harder, if I were smarter, if I were more skilled, if I set up a different structure, if I were stricter, if I trained him better, everything would be different?  (I'll work harder, I'll do better, please love me!)  Does she think I'm a bad mom?  But the beloved sitter she was replacing used to tell me what great work I was doing and how blessed our family was..."

And I actually started to tally the sitters up: "Two quit this year, but three started and love us.  One stayed on from last year (the one who had just moved, whose eyes would glow with enthusiasm when she talked about our family) and in past years no one had ever quit; they got pregnant or moved or started school... But maybe things are getting worse?  Oh, this isn't helping!  Am I in denial?  Is my life crazy or just life?  Am I bad or am I good or am I... (damn!) looking to other people to tell me what is real and whether I'm doing the right thing for my son."

It didn't help that tightness in my chest or that longing for tears to dissipate to know that I was looking to other people (rather than myself and my God) for definition and approval.  I still desperately wanted to know what I couldn't know: that I was doing the "right" things, that my son would be ok in the way I (not God) wanted him to be ok, that he'd be able to get along in the world on his own someday.  But it did help me to see that, wherever I am on my journey as a parent, the answer is not going to come from taking a tally of what babysitters think of my family, but in feeling confident in myself and my higher power.

A few years ago, I was visiting my friend Ellie and was a guest in her house for the first time in my life.  I had just taken a shower and was standing in her bathroom, a wet towel in my hand, at a loss for what to do.  Should I hang the towel on the rack?  Sling it over the shower?  Hang it on the bar inside the shower door?  And should I fold it in half or lay it out flat?  Maybe I should fold it in thirds?  Should I throw it in the laundry room?  Or maybe there was some other way of handling towels that I wasn't even aware of...  These seem like small things, but they deeply concerned me.  What was the right way to take care of a wet towel?

Oh, sure.  I knew what I would do at home.  But I also eat in front of the TV, chewing with my mouth open and resting my bare feet on the coffee table, at home.  And that, my friends, is certainly not the "right" way to eat.  I was pretty sure that there was a way to hang the towel that would signal that I was raised by wolves and would bring shame to my entire family.  My parents would be greatly disappointed in me, knowing they had told me a million times how to hang a towel, and now, at this critical moment, I had completely forgotten all they taught me about how people ought to do things.

I was going to be judged and found wanting.  I was going to be unmasked for what I was: crude and thoughtless.  Ellie was going to walk into that bathroom, see that towel hung up in some clearly, horribly, offensively wrong manner and was going to think I didn't love her enough to take care of her towels properly.  I'd never be invited back.  Our friendship would grow distant.  All over this towel!  And even if — through a sheer luck, — I passed this towel test, I was probably going to use the wrong fork at dinner.  Or put my elbows on the table.  Or forget to make my bed in the morning (I don't make mine daily at home).  Or make the bed the wrong way.  Or put my foot square in my mouth over something.

There went my brain, dashing off down those rutted, well worn tracks.  I'd seen people in my life cut down and cut out for things like the way they hang their wet towels, and I'd been cut down and cut out for similar things enough in past relationships that such questions and worries had become a matter of habit.  Somewhere along the line, I'd gotten it into my head that there was a right way to do everything, and everything must be done that way, perfectly.  If not, what followed was judgment, shame, humiliation, rejection and abandonment.  Those thoughts were so routine, I never even noticed them.  But this time, standing there in Ellie's bathroom, with a little bit of recovery behind me, I finally caught myself on that race to Crazytown and laughed out loud.  For crying out loud, it's a wet towel!  And everything is going to be ok, no matter how I hang it up.

So, I hung up the towel, left the bathroom and joined Ellie for breakfast.

Image credit: Photo by kchbrown on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a woman named Paula Saardchit. She told me she'd found my blog while doing research for an article she was writing on sex addiction for her website, and she wanted to write and tell me how moved she was by my story. Of course, I was curious to know more about her site, so I googled her. And I found out that she helps women plan lingerie and sex toy parties. (And I know what kind of party some of you have in mind. No, not that kind! You know, this is like a Tupperware party, only with vibrators.)

When I found out about my husband's sex addiction, one of the first things I did was get out my big, black garbage bags and start dumping in porn, lingerie and sex toys. The sight of them, of anything that made me think of sex or by extension of my husband's sexual acting out, made me want to vomit. So off in a landfill somewhere are all the artifacts of my subconscious attempts to control my husband and keep his sexual attention firmly fixed on constantly exciting, porn star me: the dildos and the vibrators, the bustiers and fishnet stockings and the crotchless panties and the wigs and the costumes, the X-rated board games and the porn DVDs. Yeah, I tried it all. Well, except a stripper pole. That hadn't occurred to me yet. And thank goodness because how would I have carted that out to the trash?

I had been as conventionally sexy and exciting and adventurous and engaged as can be, and my husband loved it. But it wasn't enough. That endless, aching need of his wanted more than I could give. More than all the women in all the lingerie with all the sex toys in the world could give. And still I wanted to give it. Which is how I ended up there, with the black Hefty bag in my hand, sick to my stomach with shame and disgust and rage.

And now, six years later, I was on a lingerie party website, full of pictures of that conventional sexy I dumped in the trash, wondering what kind of sex addiction article Paula intended to write. As I glanced at the site, I saw that there was plenty of the usual "hot" and "titillating" sex selling, but Paula also genuinely seemed to see these parties as a way of empowering women to learn about and appreciate their own bodies. Black and white thinking is common in the lives of addicts and those who live with them, and I've been slowly working toward a place where, after fully indulging in our culture's idea of "sexy" and then fully rejecting it (from lingerie to makeup to shaving my legs), I am exploring more shades of grey. So, just because I can't incorporate lingerie and sex toys into my relationship in a healthy way right now, doesn't mean they are evil in themselves. There are definitely aspects of lingerie and sex toys that I'm deeply uncomfortable with, and even perceive as dangerous to women, but there was enough that was positive about Paula's site that when she asked if she could interview me, I said, "Well, send me your questions and I'll see."

When I saw the questions, I found that not only was I comfortable with answering them all, this would be a good opportunity to reach out to women who may not realize (yet) that their partners are sex addicts. (I mean, what better place to find a sex addict's partner in denial than out buying lingerie?) So, while many women may be using Paula's parties as a healthy expression of their sexuality, I (taking to heart that 12 Step message of reaching out to those still suffering) couldn't pass up the opportunity to plant some seeds among those who might be indulging in sexy, not as an act of empowerment, but as one of desperation and degradation.

Then had to take that last leap of faith that Paula would put it up as I expressed it before I clicked send. (Not that I have trust issues or anything!) And she did. The interview is up, and after having thought long and hard about linking out to such a potentially triggering site, I thought I would share it with you all, especially since many of you don't have sex addiction as part of your lives at all and may find it interesting. There is nothing in the content of my interview that I wouldn't post here, but images and links in the header and sidebar are related to lingerie and sex toys. So, one last time before the link...

Warning: Sex addicts and their partners may find images and language in the linked site triggering!

(If the thought of clicking through raises any concerns about your sobriety or serenity, please feel free to e-mail me for a copy of the information contained in the interview instead.)

And here's the link (isn't it cute that I'm an expert?): Interview with Mary P Jones at Lingerie Party and Adult Toys.

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.

This weekend, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to hear a sex addict from my husband's recovery group speaking about his experiences. I know my husband's story, about as intimately as anyone else can; in a way, it's my story too. Mark read his First Step — the narrative of his life in his addiction — to me the night before he presented it to his 12 Step group, and it moved us both to tears. I've read the stories of other sex addicts in books and on blogs. I've had the chance to hear Patrick Carnes and other experts on sex addiction speak. But hearing someone else's story of sex addiction and recovery — live, with all the nuance that comes from facial expression and vocal inflection — was new to me.

I can't share the story here, as it's not mine to tell, but I did find myself wishing, as I listened, that everyone could hear — really hear, with minds and hearts open — a story like the one I heard. I wished that everyone could hear the pain and the shame and the compulsivity behind years of sexual encounters. I wished everyone could hear the remorse and regret for the pain caused. But most of all, I wished everyone could hear the gratitude, the joy and hope of recovery, the promise of change.

As my husband and I were driving home, he said, "I'm so glad that you got to be part of the kind of amazing sharing I'm privileged to witness every week." And I told him that I was so glad too. The power and beauty of the journey I heard was the kind of thing that almost made me wish everyone could go through the pain and shame of addiction to experience the gift of living a life so full of love and grace.

Earlier this week, I had a rough morning with my daughter, my son was sick, I had an IEP meeting scheduled (those of you who don't know what that is, be glad you don't) and on top of it all, I couldn't find a family pet (which would later turn up dead). After I got my daughter off to school, I called my husband Mark at work. He answered the phone hurriedly, as he often seems to at work, and said, "Is everything ok? Can I call you back?" This is the point at which I usually answer, "Yes, it's ok. Call me back."

I tend to treat calls to Mark like calls to 911: unless it's a life threatening emergency, I let him go. And there wasn't anything so wrong. There wasn't anything he could do; I didn't need him to rush to meet me at a hospital anywhere. I had one kid with a cold and another still on the cranky tail end of one and I couldn't find a pet that would probably turn up just fine in an hour or so. I thought I "should" be able to deal with that without interrupting his work day. But instead, I said, "No. No, I'm not ok."

I told him we were all well, but I was scared and worried about our pet. I told him that I was stressed and exhausted from caring for sick kids, and I just wanted to hear a safe, friendly voice: the voice of someone who loved me. I felt terribly guilty for taking time from his day for something so seemingly trivial. But it felt good to talk to him. It was what I needed right then. When I hung up the phone, I looked at the time the call had taken: 5 minutes and 9 seconds. And I thought, "That was it? That was the huge, unreasonable need I was so reluctant to ask him to meet?" Five minutes on the phone with my husband, my life partner and very best friend, out of a work day that usually lasts twelve hours. Five of the 720 minutes he works. Less that a hundredth of one workday.

Look at that. My needs aren't the huge burden my distorted thinking would sometimes have me believe. And it's ok to ask for help when I need it, even if I feel I "shouldn't" need it. Years into recovery, that is still hard to remember, and harder still to execute, but it still feels so good when I do.

This week I plan to tell one of my best and oldest friends about my husband's addiction after nearly six years of silence around it. I've wanted to let her in to this part of my life, because keeping her out -- keeping anyone I feel close to out -- feels like I'm creating a huge chasm in our relationship. The million little joys and triumphs and heartaches of recovery that have shaped me are all hidden, and when I think to share them, I have to bite my lip. I can't entirely be myself in a friendship where I have always felt most myself: most loved, most cherished, most dear. But Mark and I both needed recovery to be ready to share.

When I discovered Mark's addiction and we began our journey of recovery, we thought about who we ought to share with, and for the most part, we chose people we knew would be supportive of both of us and keep loving us no matter what. Mark didn't feel comfortable sharing, because he was so full of shame and fear that it would change the way my friend and her husband saw him. I knew they would love me just the same, but I worried that Mark was right and they wouldn't be able to forgive him. I also couldn't stand the thought that they might love him less after what had happened, so I tried to take care of him, take care of our image as a happy couple. And then as time went on, my friend had her own sadness and losses, and I couldn't bear to burden her with what I was going through. So, I tried to take care of her by hiding my problems in an attempt to lighten hers.

Now, six years later, I'm finally ready to let go of the fear of hurting her or hurting Mark by sharing all of myself again, and so is Mark. I can't control how she'll feel, but walling myself off in an attempt to control her feelings, isn't really doing a service to her or to our friendship.

Many years ago, before we had children, my husband bought me a small fish tank for my birthday. At the time, I wanted a car. I didn't really think he could buy a car, but I was relying on a very iffy public transit system to get to work, so I half hoped. His only clue ("it's pink") did not seem encouraging, but maybe he was buying one used. From a Mary Kay lady. He was definitely very excited and spending a lot of time in preparation and whispered conferences with friends. When the big day came, he proudly unveiled the tank, complete with pink gravel.

Over the years, we've had a variety of freshwater fish, from tropical to ordinary old feeder goldfish. We once had a fish give birth to tiny babies, whose growth was somehow stunted, perhaps from my over-caution in keeping them too long in a small breeding section of the tank. When my son Austen was born, the tank was home to one large angel fish, who had outlived all the rest.

As an infant, Austen screamed -- piercing screams -- nearly constantly when he wasn't nursing, which I did nearly constantly to keep him from uttering those awful screams. He had (even for a newborn) problems sleeping. He was different, more intense, more needy from the day he was born, from before he was born. And I felt like I was living my life clutching a live grenade that could explode at any moment.

In the anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation and sheer overwhelmingness of those early days, the fish tank fell into neglect. The water got murkier as it was cleaned less often. And when the last of the fish finally died, we didn't replace them, but let the tank stand empty. My memories of that time are fuzzy -- events run together and odd things stand out, disconnected -- like one long waking dream. And one of the disconnected, fuzzy memories that's weighed on me over the years was of purposely starving the last of the fish when my son was an infant. I remember lying in bed and willing myself not to get up and feed them. I wanted to be free of them, but I felt awful letting them die. Well, they could eat the algae or they were better off dead anyway, I'd tell myself. I remember the tank getting so cloudy and black that I wasn't sure when they had died. And over the years the thought of that tank haunted me.

I eventually cleaned it up and restocked it with fish. Currently, it houses one lone goldfish, as I never have gotten back into the habit of keeping it up well enough to feel comfortable with anything higher maintenance or less hardy. But as I was feeding that fish the other night, I was overcome once again by that familiar guilt and shame for the fish I'd starved. Or, it suddenly occurred to me, had I? Had I confused a dream for reality? Wouldn't Mark have fed the fish if I hadn't? It was hard to know what happened back then. Everything was such a muddle.

I turned to my husband, who was lying on the bed, and said, "I have this memory of purposely starving my fish when Austen was born. Only I'm wondering now if it really happened that way or if it was a dream." And Mark said, "That doesn't sound at all like anything you'd do." And it was true. I've been known to bring home and tend to everything from wounded birds to baby squirrels to stray kittens. And I'm obviously the kind of person who spends years plagued with guilt and shame at the thought that I might have killed some pet fish. But I was crazy back then. Crazy with post-partum depression and anxiety and the weight of Mark's growing addiction pressing down (although I didn't know that's what it was at the time). I wasn't me. Who knows what the crazy-me did?

If Mark was right and it didn't make sense that I was a fish murderer, then what had happened? I concentrated. Wasn't Angel the only fish left in the tank when Austen was born? He was. I had written it in the baby book (one of the few things I wrote in the baby book); next to "Who was there to greet you when you came home?" I had written "Our fish, Angel." And I hadn't gone out and restocked the tank. When Angel died I left it empty. So what fish could I have killed?

Then it came to me: it was the baby fish I remembered killing, because I remember thinking I couldn't tell when they had died; the water was so murky and they were tiny and good at hiding in the plants. And the puzzle snapped together. I was lying in bed willing myself not to go feed the empty tank again, because the crazy, panicky part of my brain was telling me that I couldn't know what wasn't there. I had been feeding the empty tank after Angel died. Maybe, I thought, those little fish that I thought had died long ago were still there in the plants. Maybe they needed me to feed them. I couldn't know, and I shouldn't starve them.

The guilt and shame melted away, transforming first into relief (I was not a fish murderer!) and then into delight at the metaphor for so many of my relationships: carrying guilt and shame for years because I hadn't perpetually fed an emptiness that I thought couldn't live without me. It's a good thing Mark didn't get me a car; I wouldn't have felt nearly as bad for not putting gas in it when it broke down.