Sometimes I experience needs as pain too, in a sense that the “need” is so visceral it feels sort of physical, kind of deep inside my stomach. Sometimes the knowledge that these “needs” can’t be fulfilled (like the “need” for T to “never” leave me) makes me feel so anxious, my body wakes itself up in the middle of the night in a state of absolute panic. Often, the yearning for him is like the yearning of an infant for its mother and I’m so ashamed of it and of the fact that I can’t switch it off. I “need”to be able to express this to him without fear of rejection/abandonment but I can’t. My “need” for survival (revealing less for the sake of self preservation/keeping him in my life) is sometimes greater than my “need” to voice my vulnerability.