Have you ever seen one of those movies where there's a kid, usually a boy, with some animal that he's befriended? Sometimes it's a wild animal, other times it's a stray dog...usually he either doesn't have his parents permission or the animal turns out to be more trouble than the parents expected it to be. Either way, they tell him that the animal has got to go. But...the animal doesn't want to go, because it's bonded to the boy. Finally the kid has to pretend that he's really mad at the animal- he might chase it, yell, throw rocks. Sometimes the boy cries while he's screaming at the dog to get lost, that he hates it, that he never wants to see it again. The animal goes off reluctantly, usually not all at once. Or maybe it hangs back, hiding in the brush, far enough away but...not too far. It depends on the movie.

Sometimes I feel like that animal.