I Look After You
My therapist asked me, knowing me for most of my teen and adult years, if there is anyone I miss from who I have cut out of my life in those brief but annual cleansing stints I randomly have.
Soberly, no. Drunkenly, I know I do.
I miss myself. Miss the innocence and joy before it was taken in the end.
I think of myself, if I had to ask someone for forgiveness.
I would ask my baby self if she forgives me- but she would cling to my earlobe the same she does to her own for soothing, with wide and imploring eyes. I wouldn't need to say a word, so long as I held her. She wouldn't understand, anyway.
I think of my preteen self, so traumatized she isn't sure how to compartmentalize. I wouldn't ask her to. I would have slid into bed beside her as she weeped with wonderings as to why she wasn't good enough, and tell her she is beautiful- matted hair and thinning pyjamas and all.
My teen self wouldn't be so easily soothed by my presence. I would try a greeting word to start, but she would glare and spitfire hatred. I would brunt it with a bowed head, knowing she was simply too sick to know what she was doing.
But I'd return to her, the only one who ever did. I would find her that night, where her world fell apart, and tell her it will be okay. I would bandage her wounds, and kiss her forehead in a way she hadn't felt since she was that wide-eyed babe.
No- I wouldn't ask forgiveness for and from any of them, which makes this story moot. But I wouldn't have had to. I would have simply tended to them, tender and kind, until they would never be hurt enough to need to make amends. Until they felt filled with my love that there would be no one begging for a second chance.
I would have looked after them enough to not warrant the pain, nor the longing, for an apology.