I keep secrets. It is the basis of my trauma bond, the root of which all my anxiety was born and bred, or so I am told. I used to have a therapist named Barb. She helped me greatly as I negotiated my mother’s health decline and attempted to come to terms with some things I’d been carrying for quite some time. Barb said my function as my mother’s only child, and the only child living at home, was to be the secret keeper. It goes like this. A parent who carries a load heavier than they can manage tells a child the bulk of their troubles, thereby shifting load weight onto the child, like a job that parent can’t handle. But, the load is full of secrets that mustn’t see the light of day. So, the child is given another job, mainly never to tell anyone about the things gifted to them in this heavy load. Children weren’t meant to hold down a job, much less two. One day, a child will grow up, God willing. As this former child moves through adulthood, they begin accumulating the normal loads that we carry in this world. Except, they still have that secret load gifted to them all those years ago. There’s only so much they can balance. When they look around one random afternoon, buckling under a heavy load, they might spot their own child in the room. The temptation to lighten that load onto this child is both instinct, from how their parents handled this same dilemma, and survival based. It is hard to break such a trauma bond. My children still don’t know some of the load I was gifted with as a child, so I think I mostly broke the generational curse. That’s what Barb said, anyway. I loved chatting with Barb via Zoom, but the nonexistent internet situation in Forney, coupled with a whole bunch of dogs and cats, made our appointments yet another load of anxiety I began carrying. But one day, Barb, perhaps we shall meet again.