Utmost desire and absolute aversion- what's a girl to do?

I was at a party, talking with someone I had just met, and I started freaking out. I was enjoying what the person was saying, genuinely interested in her life and what was going on with her, but then these thoughts showed up:
"What if she wants to talk to me at the next party we're at?" "Are we, like, friends now?" "Do I need to say hi to her and hang out with her and not my other friends the next time that I see her?"
This feeling started to well up in me, this need to "get home," this desire to be in my cozy bed, all by myself, with a book.
As I was heading home I thought "What was that all about? Weren't you just in the midst of making a new friend? Don't you want friends? Don't you want connection? How can you be so afraid of this thing that you want so much?"

I couldn't figure out what it was that I was afraid of, so I brought it up with my therapist. I talked about how I felt like I had some responsibility toward this person, like I was somehow committed  to her or something and I suggested that that was what was making me feel afraid.
She listened and then said, "I'm going to make some statements, and you see if they ring true with you:
'What if she doesn't talk to me the next time I see her?'
'What if she isn't my friend?'
'What if she talks to other people and not me?'

I could feel it in my gut as soon as she made the first statement. That was exactly what I was feeling, I just thought it was something else.
"So I'm afraid of rejection, not connection."
She just looked at me, in the way that therapists do.

I mulled this idea in my head a bit, asked her some more questions, and then she brought up Chris Rock. She talked about his bit about people sending in their 'representative': how when people first meet, they send in their very best selves, their representative but then later, you meet the real person and you sometimes feel like saying "Awww man, this is it? I wanted the representative!"
(please forgive any misrepresenation of Chris Rock AND my therapist- how accurate can your recollection be of your own therapy?!)
We talked about how afraid I was of not meeting her expectations the next time I met her, of saying something that she didn't like, or  just having her plain old not like me the next time I saw her: basically, not living up to the status of my 'representative.'
"So that's why I wanted to leave so much. I wanted to quit while I was ahead, leave before I could mess things up."
She smiled, "You wanted to reject her before she could reject you."
Darnit!

I thought this over too and then I asked, "So, it's not so much about going out and making connections, it's about sticking with them when they get scary- being willing to be rejected."
She nodded. I had a hope but then I thought it was just an attempt to avoid this suffering of being rejected. "Um, does it get better? Like, the more I stay around, the less likely I am to be rejected? Or, are people just always going to reject you in one way or another and you just have to tolerate it, let it be?"
"People may not always be able to meet you where you're at, but the more that you connect with them, the less likely they'll be to turn away. You actually do develop a connection over time, but that comes from you sharing your self, what's inside you. The more of that you give, the more the person can connect to you, see you."

I thought about this too. I knew that people could reject me, no matter what I did. But I also knew that if I didn't stay around, that would be the ultimate rejection. (Well, I guess it wouldn't, because if I leave, they won't be rejecting me.) But I knew for sure that if I walked away, I would be alone. And I thought that if I stayed, though I might be rejected, I'd still be there. It might not be comfortable and it might be sad but for some reason, it felt less alone. 

So I'm going to try to be present, and stick around; not just in the blogosphere, in real life too.