Thoughtfetti

He is holding me, face buried against my head, arms around me.  He is telling me how sorry he is that he hurts me, that he loves me and doesn't know why he doesn't always show it.  I am thinking how nice it is to be held, and I wish it was enough, but I can't forget the hurtful things he says when he is not showing me he loves me.  I wonder if he will ever understand the damage he has done and that it cannot be undone, that it cannot be erased, that it may one day heal over but it will always be a knurled, twisted, ugly scar and that the healed over places will never, quite be what they once were.  I wonder if he realizes how torn and tattered I am inside, and how little "I love you" does to mend that when there's still the other, the not-love, happening.
~~~~~
I am holding Sprout.  She has her back to me and is leaning into me, standing in front of where I sit.  I bury my nose in her neck and smell her Sprout scent, and clean pajamas, and the spicy pungency of the diaper ointment, and the sweetness of the juice she is drinking.  Her arms reaches back and wraps around my neck, holding me to her, her little hand alternating stroking my hair and patting my neck.  She does not want to let go just yet, and I am content to be held onto, to hold her warm sweetness to me.
~~~~~
The Evil Genius scrambles onto the lounge with me.  He smells faintly of wood and something a little sour, and he needs a haircut.  He is warm except his feet, his toes, which make me jump when he tucks them under my leg.  He leans on me and I am surprised by how solid he is - so often he is a ghost in our home, in his room playing some electronic game or building imaginary realities with Legos and other toys, honestly sometimes it's like he's not real himself, but some kind of imaginary son who is no less loved.  He leans against me and closes his eyes and smiles and tells me he loves me, and it's still the best thing ever, and he is still my best good thing, my heart.
~~~~~
It's so easy to feel lonely.  It's so sad to feel...removed...from warmth and love and life.  The cats pile up on me when I sit down.  They want to be touched, loved, and I oblige them.  They purr and make painful showings of their happiness with their paws, claws slightly extended, kneading me.  They seem to know that their warmth is a balm, their weight on my lap an anchor, that I feel like I need something solid to hold, to touch, or I will fly right out into space because gravity has stopped working for me.
~~~~~
I do not make very good choices.  I'm a decent enough person, and I try to be loving and compassionate, but I know people who know me look at me and my life and wonder what the hell is wrong with me.  I could tell them, if they had a lifetime to listen.  There's no nutshell version.  Unless...the nutshell is "Me."
~~~~~
I am having the dream again...the one with the man who wraps his arms around me and I feel...what?  Home?  Safe?  Loved?  Wanted?  Accepted?  Nothing real.  It isn't real. It doesn't exist.  There is no man.  There is no guardian, protector, cherisher, and there never has been.  He's a figment of my imagination.  If he exists, he does not exist for me.  The sooner I can get my subconscious to accept that, the better, because that dream?  Is a kind of torture.  And I can do without it.
~~~~~
Sprout often wanders through her day singing.  She sings everything - requests for juice, what she'd like to play with, what color she sees.  I remember being told that I used to sing my way through the day when I was a little girl.  My grandmother called it "K's day at the Opera".  I don't remember.  I must have been happy, or thought I was happy, or at least content, to sing that way.  I don't sing, now.  Don't want to.  I think about the band and I am just...tired.  When we are rehearsing again I'm sure the ennui will go away, but for now...tired...as if even the idea of making music is tedious.  I have no song, and I do not want to sing it.
~~~~~
My children are both on the bed with me, snuggling. Cygnus has spent the night at his place, so the bed is too large with only me and the cats (who don't come up on the bed when he's here, any more, and sometimes I miss their furry presence reassuring me what's the real and what's the dream), and it's morning but still early enough we don't feel too bad about being in bed, and both kids have climbed up and nestled in with me and I am listening to the whisper of their different breaths and my arm is thrown over them both so I can hold them snug to me and they are warm and wriggly and I am suddenly a child myself and I am in the big brass bed with Mom and my brother in the room over the kitchen at my grandparents' house, and it is early morning but we don't need to be up yet and Mom is cuddling us and we're in that hazy place between awake and dreaming and she smells of soap and cigarettes and Mom and it is good and I love her and we are warm and safe and loved and for a minute that is all there is and I am happy.
~~~~~
How are you today?