Losing people you love affects you. It is buried inside of you and becomes this big, deep hole of ache. It doesn't magically go away, even when you stop officially mourning.
Nobody is perfect, though. We all want everyone to think we are, but perfection is some crazy mythical state that we can never achieve. It is a goal beyond our grasp, always shifting and changing and taunting us, because it knows...it knows we can never reach it.
It's a lot easier to understand things once you name them. It's the unknown that mostly freaks me out. I don't know the name of that fear, but I know I've got it, the fear of the unknown.