This starts to sum it up (from a book I just finished re-reading):
“My dear,” the Magus said softly, “it sounds as if - and please pardon me for my presumption - you’re looking for a reason not to need him.”“I am,” Joanna said desperately. “That is… I don’t need him. Not really, I mean…”
“You mean you don’t want to need him.”
She was silent, feeling by the tightness of her chest, the sudden hurt of her throat, that he spoke the truth. “Him,” she said slowly, when she could again control her voice. “Or anyone.”
The velvet arm tightened about her shoulders; the light, beautiful voice spoke from the dark, “Why not?”
“Because I’m afraid if I need him I’ll screw myself up for him,” she replied, with the perfect candor of weariness. “Because I’m afraid I can’t think straight around him. Because I’m afraid I’m not doing it right — I’m not being the right kind of person. And mostly because I don’t want to need him and then have him leave.”
“Ah, Joannna,” the little man sighed. “My dear child. Do you really consider yourself that foolish, or that weak?”
And that’s a bit of how I’m feeling (as “Joanna,” of course). New relationship, old worries, old anxieties. That foolish, that weak. Even though I know I’m not.
That said, I think I’m more afraid of cutting myself off than opening myself up, truth be told. For, as the Magus goes on to say:
“If love didn’t make us insane,” the Magus said gently, “who among us would have the courage to step outside the walls we build to protect ourselves against life?”
Too true, Magus, too true.
