It would take a miracle. Maybe I’m not unlovable or unworthy of love. For the right person, any amount of effort, any effort, felt right & reciprocated. Shame ebbed, and it became easier to dodge shame traps and come home to each other. That was home. Not a place, not a time, not an identity, the two of us more than the sum of our parts together. And our little dog, too. That’s not a kind of thing one can pin down and search for. And maybe there can be only one. Only one person in a lifetime that can make a home for me. For everyone else, I’m not real, or a whole person, and there’s always something about me that’s too much or not enough. So it seems. So it goes. What am I fighting for? What am I living for? My heart, my soul, my language is dead, and I’ve forgotten how to love, to fly. I’ve forgotten what peace, safety, flow, inspiration feel like. Definitely forgotten any sense of hope, or faith in other people, or anything at all that I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t want to fall into more oubliettes of compromise that suck my soul dry. I don’t want what I live with to be dictated by the max of what I can tolerate on a good day. Or what people addicted to money and labour believe I deserve. I can’t explain. Explaining doesn’t do any good, other than to provide people an excuse to justify their choices and feelings where I’m concerned. So I feel shame, a blow upon a bruise. I’m not all I can be when I’m in pain, fear, shame, neglect. I can be more, with kindness, gentleness, patience, support for the abilities and strengths I lack. These are capacities and invisible internal strengths that also take time, tending, exercising for people to cultivate. The shitty thing is one can’t tell by looking whether someone is strong inside or weak, just as one can’t see if someone is suffering or in pain until it’s gotten really bad. I wish there was a way to see the beacon of a strong, loving soul burning in spite of it all, to call in those who want to develop that way too. We hide our love and our pain away, and words can’t prove what’s inside or not.