Eric, I don't know if we are helping to normalize your experience. I sure hope so. Here is a story I recently read in a book, by a Democrat about people running for president and vice president:

"Kerry talked with several potential picks, including Gephardt and Edwards. He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met.

"Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else--that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service.

Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before--and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again. . . .

Kerry's relationship with Edwards would sour after the election. . . . When Elizabeth [Edwards] discovered she had breast cancer, John and Teresa [Heinz Kerry] reached out to help the Edwardses find the best doctors they could. . . . Kerry told me that the Edwardses simply stopped returning calls or talking to him and Teresa. Within months, Edwards started preparing for a bid in 2008. Kerry said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, that he should have gone with his gut."

Such it is to be human.