My mom stood from her seat. “Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered. She rounded the island and silently opened her arms to me.

I fell into her embrace with a pathetic whimper, blinking furiously to try to keep my panicked tears at bay. But the longer I sat there trying not to cry, the more heavily the tears fell.

After a minute of sitting in my mother’s hold, she leaned back and framed my face with her hands. “Why are you crying, sweetheart?”

It was a great question. Why was I crying? Shouldn’t I be happy? Love was supposed to be a good thing, right? So why did I feel so panicked?...