I can tell you why. I ask them because I'm expecting the hurtful answer, and hoping for the not hurtful one.

I'm afraid of not asking, and thinking one thing, that things are a certain way, only to find out by proxy or bad and horrid experience that I was wrong and that things were not one thing, and not a certain way. So I try to cut them to the chase. I try to find out right away what the score is so that I don't have to find out the hard way.

And when I get the sad, hurtful answer, I think, see? You knew it, Arianna. You knew that this was the answer. Yet all the while still hoping that it wasn't the answer and that the answer might change.

So my masochistic behaviour continues, because I'm too afraid to just trust that things will be alright and that they'll go where they're supposed to. It's all part of this difficulty I have with letting go.

Because in the physical world, the world of reality, which I fear, when you let go, you fall.