Slowly, I am beginning to see what this anxiety is about, to see its lineaments: it has something to do with being left alone to handle a situation I am not competent to handle; it has something to do with being known and unknown, with the sense that I go through life hidden, masked (all this first-person prose, even—I write it to hide in plain sight). And to the degree that I am masked I always risk being left alone—for once the mask comes off, once my friends and intimates, my charmed students, even my beloved, loving aunts see the corruptions and shames of my real heart, they will vanish,
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