Dear Girija:

It makes all the difference when you don’t “have to know it all and do it all”, that you “can lean on them”, on other people. We are people who need people, like one song says, we are social animals, and just like an elk without its herd, we humans feel anxious, fearful without anyone to lean on, without a herd, or a social group… a family, a close social group.

“Fear has nothing over me when there is someone by my side”- this is the nature of a social animal, it feels safe within the group, and scared exiled from the group, all alone.

“I have very little else in common with the people around me. That I have to figure out. What am I willing to lose and what will I lose that for. I am still lost, but not so weary”-

– you write so beautifully.

I hope to read more about what you are willing to lose, and what you will actually lose, meaning, I am trying to understand… I remember when I was a teenager, I wrote this sentence for myself, a thought I had: “I lost everything before I had anything”. Looking back today, I think I meant that I lost the together-experience, the together feeling with my mother but never really had it. There was always a desire for closeness with her but I have no memory of being close with her, not  a single memory of affection between her and me, a meeting of the hearts, so to speak.

I think that the less of that together-experience a person has, the stronger and stronger the need for it becomes, like a hunger that consumes one’s life.

anita