It’s utterly amazing that we have this reaction. They don’t want us, and we are consumed by the potential vacuum created by their absence, and yet their very being and our neediness is toxic. Why? Why can’t we be healthy? It’s because we experienced great loss as children? I know when my father died when I was ten changed everything. I still live with that all-consuming loss. It permeates all my relationships with people, who I know don’t really like me to begin with, but they also have the confidence I do not. I guess I am driven to be with them in an attempt to get back that feeling of social confidence I had before my father died.