sparkly

Someone said that at work, today. Not about me, but about someone else. "She has amazing joie de vivre; she's so sparkly".

I wish I was sparkly. I wish I sparkled in conversations, instead of being racked with self doubt. I leave a room, and I worry what people think of me. I worry all the time. I worry when J goes away (he's going away a lot for work coming up - across the Atlantic, no less). I worry when he gets on the tube. I worry so much, all the time, that I barely even notice it any more.

I worry about my family - they are so far away. When my dad or brother call me, I instantly assume something is wrong with my mum, who is epileptic. When anyone calls at an unusual time, I worry that something is wrong and before I answer, my stomach does a little flip.

This hasn't been helped lately by the fact that something was wrong - my tiny nephew was in intensive care for a while. He's home now, but it was agony. Weirdly, I didn't outwardly worry about this. I kept ploughing through and pretending everything was fine - I couldn't visit - and then a week ago I had a little breakdown when I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for a long time, really uncontrollably. I don't cry much. Not at TV or films, generally. Not like J, who cries at anything. He can barely watch One Born Every Minute.

It's such a shame. I tell myself all the time that if anything were to happen, all that I would feel is regret for living under such a cloud of worry. All I can do is keep telling myself that. If others worry, I hear wise words coming out of my mouth. How do the sparkly people do it?