Kid Inside

I drop you off at the airport 4:45 a.m.  15 minutes early, and I’m back in bed in 45 minutes.  I’m on two hours of sleep, love, I’m fucken useless.  I get the trash out too late, and misplace the recycling bin – another two weeks before we get rid of that shit.  Sorry, love, I thought I had it together, but things like this, they remind me that I don’t.

You saw a lesser version of me last night into this morning; I didn’t mean to get freaked to shit, but I did.

I’m trying to tell you that it’s nothing you’re doing, and that’s the goddamned truth.  You’ve done fuck-all for me to be thinking the thoughts that I’m thinking.  I’m afraid, darling, that you’re me two years ago, or that you’re me six months ago.  Moral compass broken, or just pointing always towards flesh.

You’re the one with the squeaky clean history; you’re the one that hasn’t transgressed.  And yet here I am, thinking that everyone is like me, that everyone is tired of making sacrifices, that everyone will take what they can get if they can get away with it.  That we’re all looking to commit the perfect crime.

It’s not a fun way to think about the world:  that we’d all speed if there were no tickets, that we’d all fucken steal in the absence of law.

So much of my life is lived in terror, darling, and that’s a shite state of affairs.  If you could see this part of me, the one that slapped that blank stare on my face last night, the one that made my heart race like I was gonna fucken die, I don’t know what you’d do.  This kid is young and this kid fucken freaks out.

Imagine this image:

A small, young version of me; he can walk, but he wobbles; it’s still a new thing for him.  When he grabs my leg, he barely clears my knee.  And baby, he fucken loses it when his world shifts, when the things he knows as safe and secure are going away.  He’s asking if you’ll ever come back.  He’s asking when he’ll see you again.  He wants to go with you, he wants to sob his fucken soul out now that you’re gone.  A fucken toddler lives inside me, love, and I’m sorry.

This is the kid that shuts me down.  This is the kid that you saw staring at you while you were half-naked, packing.  This is the kid that almost made me vomit last night, that was ready to call in for reinforcements to stop the pain, and love, I never want to go there again.  This is the kid who’s in so much fucken pain that a knife to the hand or a gash in my thigh is the only relief.

I’ve described the sensation before, to a therapist sitting across the room.  It feels like someone has grabbed my heart and squeezing it in their fist to kill me.  I’ve read that this is one of the ways that they kill goats inMongolia– they squeeze the heart of the goat and it dies.  I think it’s supposed to be excruciatingly painful.

This time, my therapist asks me to find the edges of my heart, and to soften them.  And there I am, on the goddamned couch, making invisible spheres with my hands.  But it works and I don’t know how and I’m fucken thankful as shit, because darling, I hate being this psycho.

Of course, you and I both know that I’m not like this all the time.  But fuck, if it scares me, it can’t feel good for you, either.

He’s a kid, darling.  I can’t blame him for what he feels.  He’s seen a lot of shit that makes him afraid of things like this.  But baby, you’ve got to believe me when I say you’re not the cause of this.  And sweetheart, no offense, but I can’t ask you to be the solution.  Just be there.  Be the ears you have been already.  Be the arms that hold me.  Be patience; be love.  Fine, yes, be everything to me.  You already are, and you know I’m going to keep asking you if that’s okay.

To LMB