We have a stressful situation coming up, and I worry. I’m already seeing signs that I recognize…they could go away as quickly as they came, or they could get worse. I won’t know until it happens. I am on eggshells, unable to figure out the “right” thing to do or say, just trying not to crack the surface I tread. I don’t know how to respond to thought processes that are, to me, foreign. Nothing terrible is happening, indeed, nothing bad is even happening. But I have that ache all over my insides, like the ache you get in your eyes when you’re straining to see in total darkness, the tightwire tension of trying to be perfectly still and silent so that you can hear what might–or might not–be coming up behind you.