I notice in me that when I meet someone new and feel safe, there is a very large part of me that wants to be incredibly friendly and giving of everything that I have and every fragment that I am. I am not very sure where this comes from, this need to share so incredibly, so totally and with infinite trust, and I have too often seen this impulse conclude in something painful, in an over-doing of hings that leads to hurt, to obligation and to a convoluted version of what I hoped for. I think sometimes when I love, I love like this - in this crazy, all-consuming hope that by giving everything I will be transformed into something beautiful, lovable and wonderful - both in my eyes and in the eyes of the other. And of course, it is particularly painful when in a more intimate setting this dissolves into a hideous caricature of itself. But I do not think that trust, sharing and community is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it is a longing for that kind of trust, that kind of transformation, that kind of shared reality and experience. Maybe it is just that in being transformed I am alive in that most fundamental way - aware, hopeful, excited.