I have spent much of my life crafting a facade to hide the true (and vulnerable) me. I learned that if I showed weakness, even if the form of viewing or doing things differently, the world would pounce on me and rip my heart to shreds. So, I pretended to be like everyone else, because the cost I paid in aloneness was worth not risking judgment or criticism or hatred or rejection or abandonment. (I find I’m scared even to say that, because as I do, I can hear that critical, judgmental voice in my head lunging at that weakness like predator on prey.)

But here behind the relative safety of my pseudonym, I can share what I’m too scared to say in the real world. I can even say I’m scared to share it.

Each time I sit down to write a post, I get a lump of anxiety in my stomach. My husband is a sex addict, but I haven’t left him. My son is autistic, but I don’t think vaccines broke him or that he needs fixing. Mark and I are in mountains of debt of our own making. I’ve had an abortion. I’ve loved and dated men and women. I’m a liberal Democrat, married to a black man whose whole family is in love with Obama, and I can’t bring myself to support him yet. My kids fight. My house is a mess. I self medicate with food. (Did you know I stepped over cat vomit on the floor last night and sat down to eat an ice cream sandwich instead of cleaning it up? I did.)

Each time I put something new out, I think, “People are going to rip me down for this. People are going to be angry. People are going to know I’m a bad person. People are going to hate me. People are going to tell me what I’m doing wrong. People are going to tell me how I should think or how I should feel or how I should live my life instead. And everyone is going to see that I’m not perfect.” And it terrifies me.

Each time I see a comment in my inbox, I hesitate and feel a little sick. Sometimes I wait hours to read them. And sometimes they actually are there to tell me how awful I am. But much more often, it’s someone whispering, “Me too.” It’s someone saying, “I’ve never told anyone this, but … I am married to a sex addict / was abused / had an abortion / am thousands of dollars in debt / don’t know what to do / am scared / feel so alone…”

It’s a miracle to me that when I say to you that I’m alone, you then say to me that you’re alone, and suddenly, we’re not alone anymore. I can let go of all those secrets that were weighing me down. That same miracle happens for Mark when he goes to 12 Step meetings, and in the safety and anonymity and rigorous honesty of his program, he finds understanding and support. Mark and I found that we were pretending to be like everyone else, when everyone else was pretending too. When we all stopped pretending, we found out we actually are like everyone else. Go figure.