Hyperhidrosis: Hiding in Plain Sight PART II
By · on March 27, 2010Have you felt like me, that you were the only one? Have fear of discovery and a deeply embedded shame shadowed you as it has me? Those who read this who do not suffer from Hyperhidrosis may have a hard time wrapping their head around the idea of a shame so deep it colors one’s perception of the world. For me, it began in childhood, as it slowly dawned on me that I was different. Other kids could hold hands during a game of Red Rover and actually have fun. Other adolescents could talk about “going steady” with someone and holding hands. Television commercials made sure you knew that sweating was disgusting and something to hide: “never let ‘em see you sweat” and “raise your hand if you’re Sure”. “M&M’s melt in your mouth, not in your hands”. Why did they melt in mine? Oh, I know… because I am a freak. What other explanation was offered to me? In a child’s world– where other children can be so cruel– the only way to survive was to hide it, at all costs. When it is part of your very existence, you get good at it.
Of course, there were occasions where I failed to hide it well enough. Times where out of the blue, a teacher or someone in charge would announce “let’s join hands”. What followed would be the other person’s surreptitious wiping of their hand on their pant leg– and my small death of shame inside with a muttered “…sorry”. Going to Mass every single week became an hourlong strategy session trying to avoid the Handshake of Peace, or God Forbid (!) the joining of hands for the entire “Our Father”. I felt like even God knew I was a freak; after all, wasn’t it He who made me this way? I’m telling you, every part of my life was colored by this!
Somehow, some way, I met someone who did not appear to notice my freakishness. Truth was, of course he noticed, but he did not care. The problem that controlled my life, that ultimately I could not hide from him, mattered not one single bit. He made me feel normal, safe, beautiful. We have been married nineteen years.
About eight years into our marriage, my husband was watching TV and I was fiddling around on our new computer… and I heard a sports announcer say something about a golfer whose hands would sweat because he had a disorder– my head snapped around and of course the name of that so-called disorder was long and unpronounceable… Immediately, I typed the words “sweaty hands” into the search engine, embarrassed, no, mortified, to just be typing those shame-filled words at all– and saw for the first time the word “Hyperhidrosis”. That word told me that I was not alone. I was not some random freak. Maybe, even, there was a cure for this, if it actually was a “disorder”!! So then began the second half of my journey, the part where I could look for answers and even for others out on the Internet who were like me.
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