To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage. Lao Tzu, fourth century B.C., Taoist philosopher.

It’s so hard for me to acknowledge that people do care, that people do love me. When Mark committed suicide my dad absolutely hated me, no he despised me. Why? I have no idea and now that he’s gone I’ll never know but I think it was because I wasn’t his son. I used to bang my head against the wall in my bedroom closet to take out my frustrations. Then one day he was drinking, heard me, came upstairs into my closet and helped me bang my head against the wall until he broke my nose. That day I lost my brother I also lost my family, my mom was just a shell of herself, and she mourned day and night. I know she loved me but she hated herself, she blamed herself for Mark’s death.

After my dad died, my mom and I relished in our friendship, our love. We sort of renewed our mother-daughter relationship. We spent many hours sitting in our gardens just talking and listening to the birds. Then she was taken away from me, the last person on earth who loved me. By the time I got to the hospital she was gone, I never got to say goodbye. I can’t help but think I’ve done something terribly wrong, that I shouldn’t be loved, I don’t deserve to be loved, there’s no one left to love me. It's awful being alone.