It was as if some element of my character yearned for complete predictability, for rigid structure. Change, whether good or bad, was something fearful to me, something to be avoided. Awkward and insecure, plagued by a grave sense of my own inadequacy, as a child I had conceived of the world as something hostile and suspicious, a place that sometimes confused me, and which, because of that, I had come to regard with a sense of grave uneasiness.
