I concealed my anxiety from my husband as much as possible for the first couple years we knew each other. I was ashamed of my fearfulness. One summer during college, I moved in with him because I couldn't find a job. I had a blast of anxiety that I had a swollen lymph node behind my ear and that this meant I had cancer. Without a job, I spent hours obsessing, lost in anxiety. I went down to the tiny public library, with its creaky floors and looked at medical reference books, which gave a momentary hit of relief, and then the anxiety started up again. I finally told him about my anxious fears. It felt like confession. He had great compassion for my suffering. My pattern became long stretches of anxiety, which I hid from my husband as long as I could, and then several times a year, I would reach such a depth of anxiety that I would confess my fears to him, and cry raggedly into his chest. One summer in grad school, I felt tingling in my fingers, and had a burst of anxiousness, and w...