coming apart at the s...ession

Notes to readers:

This post is a stream of consciousness blog made in an effort to capture and understand my experience of my last therapy session in which i dissociated and really struggled to pull it together.  It is written in first person directed to my therapist. What I want you to know going in, and before you think my therapist is abusing me, is that this experience is a fusion of body memories from my childhood and the present self as I struggled and failed to find and return my body to this present self state. It took me a few days, a very supportive  husband and lots of patience and extra checking in from my therapist, and a lot, lot, lot of effort to actively seek and engage with the present despite all my cells begging me to stay inward facing... but yes, I am ok now. the struggle is real.

Coming Apart at the Session

I know you don't think I'm trying. but i am

I know you think I have control I'm relinquishing. but if i do... i can't find it. 

i was in pain. my trying, was coming to see you. i'm getting worse. not better. 

you were exasperated with me and a little frantic. first you got frustrated. then you got nervous too. and i was terrified. 

i could feel you thinking 

"I don't have time for this today." or something.

but it felt bigger than that. i felt you slipping. losing control. it doesn't (almost) doesn't matter if you were or not. i felt you losing control. 

anything could have happened, as far as i was concerned. anything felt possible. 

at first it was just me rattling apart at your questions. rattling apart before your questions. until your questions that i couldn't handle. 

then i was apart and

it began to hurt. 

the air became thicker. 

the thickness of the air becoming fog in my brain hiding one question from another thought until i forgot the questions for the thought. or perseverate on the least you did or didn't say or mean long after you stopped tracking it so my words made no sense because they were responding to half of a three questions ago two part question.

i am in my thoughts. to confused to unscramble our confusion. this body is so so much larger than it is supposed to be. this is a woman's body and yet i am inhabiting an child's body sensations. i try first to make the body fit the mind, then the mind to fit the body. then the room to straighten. but the shame of a too big body and the shame of a too small brain overwhelm as all of the muscles in my too small body tighten and tighten winding in upon themselves down and down and down the winding staircase.  in and in and in impenetrable. impregnable as they are, ironically impregnat-able. 

it is so bright. too bright. the kind of bright that exposes all the naked parts my body curls to cover them. curling can never really hide the openings. but it is all i have. it is as pretend to be covered as i can. my body shudders. i am a trembling naked mass. can you see my body shaking. in fact is my body shaking? my hands cover my eyes trying to block the brightness. trying not block the being of being seen. trying to be unsee-able. 

then, finally mercifully the syrup of darkness begins to descend. the longed for relief settles blessedly over me for but a second. then i am grasping for it. but it rises against my will. like an orgasm you almost reached receding just as your body submitted to it. a yawn cut short just as you begin to feel it shudder through your body. i grasp for it. desperately calling the blackness back. begging the relief to call off it's ascent back in to the brightness of day and the pain of my body my core left trembling with exhaustion a vibrating puddinged excuse for muscles and organs. no no please no come back blackness

then i am jumping at the name coming from your voice. 

it's my name. i recognize it as the shake subsides. 

then again i am jumping at the sound of your voice.

then again i hear my name even as my body is between the beginning and the end of a terrified spasm. 

then again. and again. 

then you make a bang ricochet through my muscles. you are telling me to leave. that you need to leave. then you are looming over me.

you are losing your patience for me.  your voice is shriller.  like screaming. like hysteric like screaming like losing control and fear and screaming 

then you leave and i breath because maybe you will be gone long enough to call the blackness back. or run away. but then you are back and you pressing something rubbery at me. rubbery like a pretend body part trying to push it into my hand 

pulling my hands from my wrap from my head pressing them on the fake body part

then you are pouring water on me water from your hand on my skin. pouring water on my head so much water and still things (you?) are loud so loud and i know i am trembling i can see it i think. i think you are holding my arm and i know it is shaking. from the terror and now the cold from the water from the fear from the noise and the light and the darkness who pretends not to know me. your hands are on me. you are pulling the arm away from my body. i am losing so i let it go. i open my eyes to the light to my shame i am spent. please let me go. please let me go. you are going to let me out. out one door. out two doors i just need to dodge around you. you open the door but stop me. your arm across the exit. you want me standing in in the doorway. but i cannot so i dodge for the chair instead and collapse in to what little protection it offers. i can hug the back of it if i need to. i curl toward the back of it. i am still trembling everywhere. maybe only everywhere inside now. i do not know.i am fully wrecked but some robot part of me is doing what you say. i am two. two exhausted. two wet. two afraid. two mute. one knows how to use my phone and how to do a little bit what you want me to. one experiences. one hovers. one is fighting. one has surrendered. two are losing. two walk down the path two the car. two try to climb in and hide. two can not. two collapse against the wall. one feels pathetic, disgusting, and worthless. one is still trying. one texts handsome but is disappointed when he responds that he has no car instead of "i am on my way." one knows no one, especially not he, can help me. one knows you can or will not help me either. one knows i'm supposed to help myself. two are losing hope. 

you are not the only one who has poured water on me you know. they did too. they might have water boarded me since i doubt they actually tried to drown me. they definitely poured water on me. a whole bucket once. i was outside. my father was telling me to do something. maybe come with him because i was a lazy good for nothing slut. maybe help him with something because i was a good for nothing lazy slut... and i was refusing. because i was a good for nothing lazy slut. i had headphones on with music. he ripped them off my head. maybe he pulled my hair. but i was bigger then the other time. 16 at least. so he poured a 5 gallon bucket of water on my head. i threw my disc-man that my grandfather neighbor had bought me across the yard sure he had destroyed it. my mother was also there at the time. i remember. she thought there was nothing wrong with the water since i was being disobedient and it didn't "hurt" me. that is all i remember. not what came before. not what came after. just the water and the yelling and the blackness i had been trying to conjure up then too. i had been using the music to block him out. i was probably already working or i don't know why i would have been out in the yard already. i don't know what he wanted or why i was refusing. 

i need you to be perfect. and long suffering. and omniscient. at least when it comes to me. all the things they say only god is and can be. of course that's bullshit. instead of pretending god is something we can only conceive of, never fully experience they should figure out or at least aspire to teach us to be with imperfection in and around us. all that reality is. imperfection. that's neither here nor there though. 

what is here and now is me.

and you.

i'm looking for your cracks and pressing at them. 

because you have them. and i know it. and i know

as surely as I know it's not true, that if i break you (in my eyes anyway). 

if i can get you to fail me, it will be as the others did. 

i believe that you are angry and frustrated and dissapointed in me. i haven't gotten over my last failure. i believe you don't think i'm trying. but i am. 

i can see how it's not you. how its me trying to break our relationship. 

but i am trying. coming back is the other half of trying to make you give up on me. please stop saying i don't want to get better. i do. i do. i do. 

it's 

it's just

it's just

that creep when i called him years ago

he kept talking about his friend the neurosurgeon neurosurgeon neurosurgeon 

and of course i don't know

but i feel like he was giving me that piece of the puzzle too. 

about his friend the neurosurgeon. 

my father was a genius to

how else could i be as smart as i am

unless i'm not actually as smart as i think i am but that at least has been externally confirmed and believed by a lot of other smart people over the years...

that's what you say isn't it. 

i shouldn't be even as ok as i am

probably because i got something, enough of something and am smart, right.

they broke me with a neurosurgeon.

that's what i think

now. 

when my brain is screaming itself to death up there. 

"they broke me with a neurosurgeon" 

what are your chances when a neurosurgeon breaks your brain. 

i don't have an illness. this ptsd, depression, ptsd, anxiety, ptsd isn't an illness like it might be for some people who have just one piece or another of it. 

i dont have a disease so much as an injury. or like syphilis. if i have a disease it's one they meant for me to have. 

i'm not supposed to think i'm special. i'm not supposed to actually believe i'm the special snowflake. but i do. 

i'm convinced somewhere in my bones that whatever happened to me was special. 

i mean maybe there were others. certainly there were. but. i mean. i hear so much about people who were sold to pedophiles and they remember it. 

what makes me not remember?

them. they made me not remember. 

i honestly believed i had never had sex before eric. 

and yet i also want to believe that they initiated not one but two abortions. 

but it hurt for months when eric and i started having sex. and i bled the first time. 

that doesn't make any sense. 

what am i remembering. 

i'm supposed to know enough. you say i know enough now. that the way i feel is how everyone like me feels. 

like what i remember in one way can not be true because it doesnt make sense. but don't you see. i never thought i had a good or even remotely ok life. it's not ok or bad. it's normal bad or special bad. 

and i'm special bad. but i can't believe it. 

i honestly don't see the end of today.

the end of tomorrow. 

i want day treatment. 

but special day treatment. 

because i'm more than most programs can help. 

i want day treatment to take my brain out and clean it of all their initial meddling and put it back in the way it was supposed to be. the way my genes made it. i want my initial organic brain fixed back to the basics. same with my body. like a blood transfusion for trauma. 

or at the very least i want to be knocked out for a couple of days so my body can heal a little bit before i have to go on. you know how some people describe crack? they describe it as the first time they ever felt unconditionally loved. 

it's all i can think about. i have my own little version of that. its the blackness. but like drugs it doesn't last. but i need you to understand that i really do need more help right now

i need. need need NEED to be put out of my misery before my nerves all spontaneously combust. i want to continue to make good decisions.   

or maybe i just need a rigorous exercise and neuroSOMETHING routine. you used to talk about something to listen to. i can do that now. but i also need. like help. like somehow help checking on me every day.   progress of keeping my routine. and i know i should be able to do it myself. ok. and i know you think i should have kept me job. and yo are disappointed in me and all that. but i think there was more to it than juuust quitting. i'm a pressure bomb. 

i'm just going to stop now. but...

please help me. 

It's been a while (and other trade secrets)

Handsome is troubled too.
It's the piece that is most overlooked in our trauma saga.
Because, well...
I'm the one.
I mean, I'm the one.
I'm the broken one.

I'm the one who gets triggered by the act of laying down on a bed at night. Yeah. the act of LAYING DOWN triggers anxiety that wakes me up and keeps me awake. I can be falling asleep sitting up, but if I lay down. I'm suddenly wracked with anxiety and wide awake.

I'm the one who's body twitches and jerks to phantom memories my brain has either hidden or never recorded to begin with.

I'm the broken one.

I'm the one who has beaten my face with a metal power strip and then choked myself in it's chord. Because of... because of compulsions. Desperate compulsions to have some concrete memory.

I'm the one who's childhood was hijacked by some real life 50 shades of grey or it's pedophilic alter ego. It's not sexy IRL.

I'm the one.  The volatile one. The hypersensitive one. The one who's brain is both hiding and seeking a true measure of cruelty within which to place the smorgasbord of my post traumatic symptoms and trauma's. That's actually not redundant, by the way.

But... Handsome.  Quiet, contemplative, neurotically logical Handsome, with his perfectly timed sardonic humor, compulsive humility and loving supportive family. The straight man to my... well whatever the fuck this mess(me) is. He's no perfect specimen (close, but...). He comes with his own near misses and wild innapropriations (yeah, well. It SHOULD be a word).

Sometimes the very goodness of his family blinds him to their dysfunctions and shortcomings (because, as I feel compelled to state in defense of their very real loving supportiveness, even great families and parents have their dysfunctions and shortcomings). Although, perhaps to say he is blinded to their pitfalls isn't quite the right phrasing. It is not that he can not see them, it is that he can not or will not reflect on or own the impact of their mistakes on his past and current psychosocial make-up. His hangups are simply character flaws. He struggles to/perhaps refuses to acknowledge the negative impacts his childhood, upbringing and family culture have had on him. Certainly his parents were good enough. More than.  And to him, that's generally the whole picture (it's not).

The truth is, having a super fucked up family history, as horrible as it is, can sometimes be a get out of jail free card. Of course I need to examine the ways in which my childhood, my parents and their partners in crime have impacted my development, sense of self, mental and physical well-being. I mean, they literally fucked me. It's harder, when they did a pretty good job, to see the value in this type of exploration. It seems to feel like passing the buck or playing the blame game to Handsome, at best unproductive, at worst hurtful to his loving family members.

The problem is that such a refusal to examine the origins of one's make-up, under the assumption of over-arching good-enough-ness, leaves you vulnerable to repeating those same mistakes in a never-ending cycle rather than improving upon them in the current generation, and unable to make significant changes in one's own problematic behaviors.

Of course, I recognize this is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. But here's the thing, often as not,  they really are, both black. And whether it's the pot or the chef pointing it out doesn't have much bearing on the reality of the blackness involved. After all, as my parents (the good one's) are fond of pointing out, couples generally pair up with someone of similar intelligence and comparable emotional baggage. Comparable meaning similar in scope not necessarily in nature.

All this is to say that while we have the potential to compliment each other in all the best of ways, and often do, when our combined traumas come head to head (most often in relation to the children) it can be really devastating for everyone involved. Re-traumatizing to me and Handsome, and far worse, traumatic for Brown Eyes and Tousled. More on that later (probably). In the meantime, here's to fervently hoping reparations, acknowledgement, on-going treatment and unconditional love can help our sweet boys make out okay, in spite of it all...

A very Kreik Christmas

It was the night before christmas and the Kreiks all over australia were tucked up in their burrows.
Thad bad blondnen grinch who thought christmas was horrible said "hah, I have a plan!"
he,he,he if I can't find a reindeer, why don't I make one with my pet stolen kreik. If I can't find a santa suit why don't I make one. Moterman and I were sound asleep when we heard the sound of hee hee ha ha ha. My brother slept on but me and moterman got up and took our flashlights and lightsabers.
Hee hee ha ha ha i'm going to wreck christmas forever cackled the bad Blondnen. I jumped right outside with my warm jacket on and saw him with his sled and pretend reindeer which was just his own little Kreik. Then we got in a battle. Then I pretended to give in and handed him both ends of the electric christmas light strings. I yelled to Motorman "hey turn on the electricity" just as Bad blondnen connected them.

Zeeeooouuuch!!!! He cried and fell down on his slay.
"owe that hurt! he said.

Then I said, it was my plan all along.

Fine, he said. You win. I'll give you the pet Kreik!

So I kicked Blondnen out of the house with a "bye, bye, bye". And tucking the Kreikling into my covers, to sleep until santa had left our presents, even a little one for the Kreikling and my own pet, Susana.

Words by Tousled
Transcribed by Kaja

It was a prehistoric christmas eve!

It was christmas eve, not even my pet compsignathus named clover was stirring. The stockings were hung with care in hopes that Saint Velociraptor would soon be there. The children were snuggled all up in their beds while visions of dinosaurs danced in their heads.  My brother and I had just climbed into our bunks when out on the lawn there arose such a racket of roars I climbed as quick as a cheetah down the rungs of my ladder. I pulled on my dino robe and looked over the balcony to see what it was.
There I saw...

St. Velociraptor and 10 dromeosauruses down on the driveway. He called out their names while giving directions.  on Dasher, on Dancer, on prancer and vixen. On cupid, on comit! Rudolf show me the way! Lazer, scan the area for anything large like giganotosaurus! They flew up to the top of the house like microraptors! And there light as a raptor leaping out of a tree St. Velociraptor jumped from his little dino-sled and into the chimney.

He zoomed down like the velociraptor he is. He stuffed the stockings as quickly as a microraptor can glide, with dino claws and toy dino tooth swards.

I looked out the window to see T-rex, Dromiosaurus, Giganotosaurus and Triceritops crossing the hill toward our house! Little clover my pet compsidnathus dashed to my side and told me in dino, I think we're in trouble! I leaned over and whispered into her tiny dino ear, "Don't be so worried! I'm sure St. Velociraptor has it all under control, OK!"

Sure enough, with a wink he lept back up the chimney and called to all the dino's "It's time to put on a show!"

Suddenly all the dino's were dancing, in each their own way, even little clover, down by my feet.

Too soon it was over and off they all dashed leaving nothing but the many dino tracks in the snow.

I went back to bed where little clover curled up on my stomach as she always does and fell asleep to the sound of distant dino rawring!

Words and pictures by Brown Eyes
Transcribed by Kaja

Why I can't Thanks this Giving

It's thanksgiving day.
but I am not thankful.
I am sick, angry and isolated.
Isolated by my anger.
by my pain.
by my fear.
by the past. which has made me angry.

I am not always an angry person.
but give me this one.
give me this day.

I am angry because protests (peaceful or not always so) by indigenous americans and allies for their water (and ours) their land, and their sovereignty are being met with brutality, greed and indifference. STILL.  In 2016. In my country. By my people. And I am doing nothing. (or very little... signed a few petitions, share what I can...) http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/09/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-timeline-sioux-standing-rock-jill-stein

Because Native women have the highest rates of rape and murder. (And no, it's not by Indigenous men).   http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/women-s-rights/violence-against-women/maze-of-injustice

Because so many people blindly distrusting "the media" gobble up lies that suit their preferences without seeking any verification, then go on to blame any legitimate or otherwise for not also "reporting" things which agree with their own thinking.  People who do not know better and are being taken advantage of by for profit "journalism" and scammers and people who should know better, but chose the easy way out. http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/

Because a minority of Americans voted for an illegitimate president (I know those are strong words. But I'm not here to change the minds of Trump supporters.), in the name of change, for the hope of restoring something lost, lost jobs, lost privileges, lost pride. But, it is not change, and it restores no one. Hatred begets hatred. Trump is not new, and he is not a do-over. He is a pathological liar who will say anything he thinks folks want to hear to accomplish his own interests, mainly faim and fortune. And, MORE IMPORTANTLY, most americans DIDN'T VOTE. So no, while I take issue with this angry minority, I don't blame them. I blame the rest of us. I blame the ones of us who can't be bothered, don't have the time or the energy to stand for the right things when the stakes are not high enough or we don't have a clear, squeaky clean hero. Newsflash (they don't exist. have you ever met a perfect person? so where would a perfect hero come from?) Sometimes you just have to wade into the mess. The local politics. The "locker room" conversations you overhear, the family member quoting lies they've been heard passed off as statistics or posting "news" which any quick check of google or snopes would discount as completely phony. I'm not saying argue with people. I'm just saying question what you hear. "Where did you hear that? It's very different from what I have heard, let's look it up and make sure we are both getting accurate information. I would hate to agree or disagree with you based on a false premise." Most of us have phones that have put hundreds of generations of knowledge and research all across the world within our fingertips on a moments notice. Lets use that. Let's not keep our worlds small because we are tired, overwhelmed... I am too. And chances are good, I've survived at least as much as you have in my life. Maybe different things. But far too much for 100 years, yet alone 32.

Yes, I am angry. I am angry for what my 32 years have been filled with. I am angry for the world I live in.

But I have not given up caring. My anger is caring. Caring for what I have survived. Caring for what police officers are being asked to do and for what they are doing. Caring for water protectors, including the few making decisions which may end in more harm than good when pushed up against the impossible events of all the combined histories leading to the events of today. If you have not survived trauma like that. Don't judge. And if you have. Dont judge. Hear the message, people. Hear each other. We, are all we have left. When this world goes up in flame for our follies (and it will be for our follies, the greed of the few powered by the silence of the many) all we will have had is our love for each other. Or not.

I will have loved. If nothing else. And I pity no person more than the unloving dying unloved. Pity and sorry may not turn my heart toward them, but I can at least see, even their suffering, and have compassion, if not redemption, and this is what makes me human. Stay human hearts. For if I can, perhaps you can. And if you can, perhaps I can. By the strength of our wills and the love we will carry to our graves.

So yes, even though it is from afar, and even though it is not enough, from my original pillager's heart to yours, this Viking stands with Standing Rock.

father's be good to your daughters.

I have this craven need to belong coupled with an intense mistrust of closeness and any sense of belonging which I may have. My sense is that coaxing me into trusting (under desperate circumstances) followed by a dramatic breach of that fragile trust is one of the tactics my abusers used to keep me under their control. It was brilliant, really. By creating in me such a profound disillusionment in the trustworthiness of apparently trustworthy folk, they effectively blocked the only safe escape route any abused child has : that of placing their confidence in an outsider.
I entered adulthood with an emotional backdrop of intensely coaxed and horribly abused trust, fake help ever more persistently offered with the express intent of achieving some slight trust to then break. The result a deeply ingrained belief that trust will be followed by betrayal, onto which was painted the additional false starts and gains followed by losses experienced by any former foster child. Family is as family does. Family does not need you as much as you need it. People say family when they love you, but really mean friend. They are just saying family because they see the need in you for them to say it, without truly understanding that they do not, in fact, mean it, at least not the way you want them to.

Which is why I was able to harbor enough mistrust for the family who wanted to adopt me (and believe me, who I most certainly and desperately wanted to belong with) at 17, to disappear the first time I really disagreed with my would be dad about what was or wasn't good for me. Naturally I was right (no big surprise there, I was 18 or 19 at the time and as many of you must know, all teenagers are by default correct in any/all assumptions, particularly those in opposition to their parents guidance.) I don't regret not getting involved in the venture he was proposing although I doubt it would have brought about the complete personal demise I envisioned. Likely I would have tried it, my misgivings/discomfort leading to less than perfect results and ultimately a break with it at some point rather than total moral degradation. It's funny, I'm 31 years old at the writing and it is only just now dawning on me that it would not have killed me to have tried my hand at it. My parents thought it would be a good way for me to make some much needed money, maybe buy a car. I thought it was a cult. Funnily enough my college room mate (read best friend) and her fiance sold cutco for a summer to save up money for their wedding. They hated it, but it did help with the bills... I imagine something similar would have happened with this. I may or may not have made enough for that car, but maybe a few flights home (my parents moved from CA to AZ my first year of college).  I understand the depth of my misgivings now, in a way that none of us could have at the time. I had just escaped a cult (though I wouldn't put it together, much less call it like it was for many years). In retrospect it's not surprising that a pyramid model business venture would have made me profoundly uncomfortable.

When we finally did reconnect I said to my dad that I don't think I'd had any concept that our disagreement didn't mean they were done loving me. I don't think it ever occurred to me you would still love me if I didn't give in. His response was along the lines of "and it never would have occurred to us that disagreeing would have any impact on our love for you". And yet, I don't remember ever speaking to them again. I had become afraid, certain they had never really loved me, certain their only interest in me was as one more anonymous notch in the stick, rung on the ladder, cog in the gear (or whatever phrase actually makes sense here). My brain had no use for any input to the contrary. A burn victim exposed to a match, I recoiled and never looked back to see the encompassing flames that weren't. They had used me, they hadn't intended well for me. They had given bad (I thought at the time) dating advice to a friend of mine - obviously they could not love or have ever loved me.

My math was bad. I was putting the wrong numbers into the wrong equation without ever questioning the result. After all, it was the outcome I had always secretly expected. Hadn't I always been waiting for the other shoe to drop and this sure looked liked a falling shoe to me. Sure the input was faulty, but I had no way of knowing this. I was a creature of instinct, believing in myself above all else. The infallible authority on all things personal: me. Even today my capacity for trust quickly wavers under duress.

But writing this has had an unexpected outcome. I think I finally see my dad's pressing me to join their venture for what it was. Something I would have survived. And more importantly simply something my dad thought I should do that I did not want to do. I wish I could have known that refusing, even under some amount of continuing pressure didn't have to be the end. I wish I could have known that my dad pushing me to do something I didn't want to do wasn't the same as my dad raping me. But sadly, I did not.

And because I did not, my father was not at my wedding. My father was not there to welcome his first (and later second) grandson into the world. My mother never got to help me into my wedding dress or watch me becoming a mother or dance a tiny newborn around the maternity ward. My parents never got to shuttle boxes into our first home or see my boyfriend turn fiance fall in love with me and me him, shake his hand or tell him not to break my heart. Instead they got it all thrust upon them at one time when they said "yes" to me, again. An extra grown daughter, family in tow, popping up out of nowhere. Son-in-law and grandsons strangers to them and everyone they are close to now. Only those who knew them two states and almost 10 years ago ever knew who I was, and then simply as a quiet, troubled teen who kept popping up around them. And truthfully, I don't know if they grieve these things for themselves. They have two other daughters, after all, one other son-in-law. But I know they missed it all. That we missed it all. And I grieve. It is hard to know how much I missed out on by my own choice. And yet, I can hardly blame myself for being the gun shy person I was and am. No one can. It served me well and saved me from much.

The funny thing about finally having what I wanted for so long is that just beneath the gratitude, which is abundant, is a profound loss.

And don't even get me started on the beloved and adoring little sisters I lost...

People should not rape, brainwash and torture their children. It really fucks them up, even for the best of what's still in store for them.

the thing about me is

i'm fragile.
from surviving.
because what's true is
what doesn't break you
              ... does actually.
yes, I'm strong.
but in all the wrong doses.
i'm battle strong,
not every day strong.
molded to withstand torture
more than imperfect love.
my vulnerability,
invincibility.
my greatest flaw
infallibility.
false of course.
the grown up
who was never allowed to out-grow
the childish protection of of egocentrism...
until it was all but too late, anyway...
oh heart!
my  heart!
broken battered shards of heart
precious all that's left of heart,
perhaps to fragile to find healing heart
find comfort,
learn comfort,
please, oh please,
take comfort!