The Key, I Suppose, Has Less To

I Am Shy By Nature, A Person Who's Always Found Something Burdensome About Human Interaction And Who Probably Always Will, At Least To Some Degree.

Solitude Is A Breeding Ground For Idiosyncrasy, And I Relish That About It, The Way It Liberates Whim.

Something Is Missing: That's As Close As I Can Come To Naming The Sensation, An Awareness Of Missed Or Thwarted Connections, Or Of A Great Hollowness Left Where Something Lovely And Solid Used To Be. ...there Is Something Fundamentally Insatiable About Being Human, As Though We Come Into The World With A Kind Of Built-in Tension Between The Experience Of Being Hungry, Which Is A Condition Of Striving And Yearning, And The Experience Of Being Fed, Which May Offer Temporary Satisfaction But Always Gives Way To New Strivings, New Yearnings.

There's Something About Sober Living And Sober Thinking, About Facing Long Afternoons Without The Numbing Distraction Of Anesthesia That Disabuses You Of The Belief In The Externals, Shows You That Strength And Hope Come Not From Circumstances Or The Acquisition Of Things, But From The Simple Accumulation Of Active Experience, From Gritting The Teeth And Checking The Items Off The List, One By One, Even If It's Painful And You're Afraid.

Love—the Desire To Love And Be Loved, To Hold And Be Held, To Give Love Even If Your Experience As A Recipient Has Been Compromised Or Incomplete—is The Constant On The Continuum Of Hunger, It's What Links The Anorexic To The Garden-variety Dieter, It's The Persistent Pulse Of Need And Yearning Behind The Reach For Food, For Sex, For Something.