He kissed me before leaving. He kissed me twice and I didn't ask him to.
The night was long and my dreams peppered with visions of strangers. We had the fan on but it was not enough to fight off the impossible heat that has assaulted the streets of the city these past few summers. The dog woke us up more than once, his nametag hitting against the floor, a metallic screech that in the midnight stupor of sleeplessness sounded a lot like the little spoon in Ojos de Perro Azul. I looked at his eyes more than once. I even stared into them. What I never allowed myself to do with N, last night I did. And I found kindness. I found a tender question mark, a light and unserious realization that he liked me. It's been such a foreign feeling. Almost half a year of healing, and it still feels new and somewhat out of place, to be so liked so naturally and without conflict.
There was no mystery tonight. There was no pretending or calculated contentions or fenced off areas that I could distractedly wander into and then find myself being interrogated by a firing squad, tried and charged and prosecuted for wanting to feel close to another human being. I never felt undeserving. The idea had not even entered my thoughts until now that I write these lines and remember the world I used to live in. Remember the deep uneasiness of knowing that in his mind I was not, ever, deserving of closeness, condemned to be eternally out of place, always aiming too high, out of bounds, daring to ask for something that was beneath him.
I had forgotten what it was like. To be held like I'm a piece of precious china. To have every inch of my body treasured, explored almost with a sense of reverence. To cherish the skin I inhabit and never tire of it. I feel grateful and it feels strange to feel grateful for being treated with tenderness. It feels strange to have been walking around in pieces for so long and realize that I feel whole again, that I can be whole with myself in the company of another and I will not break in the process. There is still so much I don't understand, so many spaces that remain dark and so few words to name them, that I am often only guided by my intuition and the irremediable need to have confidence that others will fill the blanks for me.
I am still not able to trust and I doubt I ever will like I used to. I doubt I should. But I also don't want to make my way through life in that untrustworthy and ever-suspicious way of N's, assuming culpability where there was no act to judge to begin with, always looking over one's shoulder, doubtful of every word and every step and every action even of the person closest to you. It is sickening. It is toxic. He may call it safe but I have the unarticulated and unexplored sensation that to carry such deep distrust pollutes the mind to a point where it is unable to establish healthy and sustainable relationships with self and others. This is still a crude reflection, one of the many lacunae in my understanding of what happened these past years, but I want to hold on to it as the sun begins to rise on this, the first day that I woke up next to a man other than N. I want to hold on to it because last night felt lighter and healthier and more loving than our whole relationship did, and there's a lesson hidden in there that I am yet too blind and hurt to see. I received, in the course of a day, more affirmation and validation and care and consideration and tenderness than I did for months with N, perhaps for the whole time we were together. He, E, said things that I never once heard during that time. Never, not once. He said them with no shame or guilt and it is strange to be liked without shame or guilt.
I am not looking for love. My heart is not yet ready to love again. But this brings me one step closer to healing. This sharing myself and seeing in the eyes of another person the things I can not yet see in myself. Loving myself through their reflection, because self-love has been denied to me for so long that I am relearning it from others. Unlearning the hurtful practices I adopted as only means to defend what little I has left of me.
Oh dear, the path of recovery seems so long and windy. I'm terrified. There is no roadmap to heal from abuse, is there? Only lighthouses here and there, kind hands and warm hearts, lucid allies, and sometimes, loving lips that kiss you even when you've forgotten how to ask for it.
