Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Topics - bluepalm

#1
I have today written elsewhere in this forum of an important recent insight: that I use thoughts of extinction as my only effective way to  'self-soothe'. Critical to this insight was my remembering a poem I wrote forty years ago. It amazes me that I knew this forty years ago but only really grasped what I was saying then in recent days.

The Comfort of Extinction

The sharpness of the sun
and the square heaviness
of daily doings -
of breakfast toast
and truck exhaust,
of children's sticky faces
in my lap.

These mock my midnight struggle
when the unassailable logic
of the comfort of extinction
filled my mind -
and overflowed in visions
of drifting softly in the sandy depths
weeds woven round my eyes
fleshy dribbles being nibbled
from my breasts.
#2
In a recent discussion with my GP about my emotional state, which was at that time 'all over the place', I told her it frightens me how quickly my thoughts have, throughout my life, turned to suicide. I recounted my recent thoughts of planning to board my dogs and then send a  note to the boarding kennel telling them I would not return.

Hearing this, my GP arranged an urgent referral to a counsellor the next day. Her urgency puzzled me. When I saw the counsellor she was obviously worried that I would hurt myself, that I was in danger. When I next saw my GP, she said she had been frightened by my plans for my dogs.

This series of events led to an important insight for me.

I realised that the speed with which my thoughts turn to suicide is because such thoughts are my only effective way of 'self-soothing'.

When I seek comfort in my mind there is a frightening blank - no people, no events, no memories, no places, nothing comes to my mind to give me comfort. I have nothing to cling to in my mind when I feel frantic for comfort - except the thought of extinction.

I wonder why it has taken me so long to understand this when I actually wrote a poem about it forty years ago!  Here is what I wrote:

The sharpness of the sun
and the square heaviness
of daily doings -
of breakfast toast
and truck exhaust,
of children's sticky faces
in my lap.

These mock my midnight struggle
when the unassailable logic
of the comfort of extinction
filled my mind -
and overflowed in visions
of drifting softly in the sandy depths
weeds woven round my eyes
fleshy dribbles being nibbled
from my breasts.


This insight has given me relief. It has drained a lot of the fear out of the way I turn so quickly to thinking of death. In fact it has made me feel angry that I have been left all my life with nothing but death to turn to for comfort. That my relationship with my parents (and then with my husband) was so desperately bleak, so devoid of any moment of comfort. What an indictment of their behaviour towards an innocent infant and child and a broken and desperately sad young woman!

It feels healing to turn my fear into anger. I feel this has been an extremely important and protective insight.
#3
Checking Out / Needing a break
October 14, 2021, 10:01:04 PM
I've recently had a disappointment in therapy. My doctor recommended a psychologist who was trauma aware. However, although he was a kind  man, he was intent on proceeding with schema therapy, which I felt was not appropriate for addressing my central symptom, my grief.

However, from that brief experience I've taken away a new resolve to tackle my strong tendency to fall into rumination and to rely on avoidance of people and of TV/movies to protect me from being triggered.

As a result, I feel I need to take a break from OOTS for a while. I need to concentrate on being actively 'in the moment', inviting new stimulation and ceasing to ruminate on my trauma or to consider others' traumatic experiences.

I'm sure I will be back because this forum has been central to my healing process. However, for the moment I need a rest.

Meanwhile, I thank Kizzie and all those who contribute to this kind and caring space.
#4
The Blue Knot Foundation in Australia has today launched new branding and announced that it now has two websites, one specifically for adult survivors of complex trauma and those who personally support them (www.blueknot.org.au ) and a separate website for professional practitioners in the area of complex trauma (professionals.blueknot.org.au).  The announcement states:

"Our new Blue Knot Community website which can still be found at www.blueknot.org.au is wholly dedicated to the needs of adult survivors of complex trauma and those who personally support them including friends, partners, family and carers."

"Today we are also launching our Blue Knot Professional Community website at professionals.blueknot.org.au.  This site, which links seamlessly with the Community site is tailored to better meet the needs of practitioners, service providers and leaders. It offers professional development training programs and webinars, reflective practice, supervision and organisational change options as well as evidence-informed publications, fact sheets and resources. As we build our professional community, we will develop more tools for practitioners and services to better support survivors towards recovery while safeguarding their own wellbeing."
#5
Poetry & Creative Writing / She is a 'Piece of Work'
August 07, 2021, 11:24:47 PM

I have recently, and most reluctantly, identified one of my cousins as being a person who has been harming me, quite deliberately, under the guise of family and friendship. She probably felt secure in believing I wouldn't go 'no contact' because, being fairly isolated and living alone, I have valued and nurtured our relationship over many years and expressed the wish that she be like a sister to me. However, she recently made a comment that was the proverbial straw that broke my back and I asked her not to contact me. She complied immediately with my request, which indicated to me that I was merely serving as a source of supply' for her narcissism. I now feel great relief, which indicates to me that my mind and body had been absorbing and forgiving her hostility for a long long time.

https://grammarist.com/idiom/a-piece-of-work/
"The literal meaning of the term a piece of work is a work is the product produced through someone's efforts. However, a piece of work is also used as an idiom to describe someone who is unpleasant, dishonest, hard to deal with, of low character. When used in this fashion, a piece of work is a derogatory phrase." 


A 'Piece of Work' *

It was a slow boil. 

The realisation came
reluctantly, over many years.

Over many gut instinctual
reactions suppressed.

Over multiple shocks
at her conduct set aside.

Over ignoring my
recoiling from her words.

Slowly the deep desire
that this woman
be 'like a sister to me'
unravelled.

With the unravelling
came relief.

For she is truly
'a piece of work'.
#6
For the past fifty years I have, more or less on a daily basis, spent time trying to understand why the people closest to me have sought to hurt and deprive me and crush my spirit.

At first these efforts were part of my ceaselessly ruminating on what had happened to me.

In recent years, with ready access through the internet and books to information on psychopathy, malignant narcissism, other personality disorders and the effects of being on the autism spectrum, my attempts to 'diagnose' those who've traumatised, and those who still traumatise, me have become more targeted but no less frequent.

About five years ago a therapist told me I didn't need to spend time trying to understand why those around me behaved as they did and they do. Rationally I understood what she said. But I still do it and I wish I could stop. It's like picking at a scab on my soul and I wish I could just leave it be and let it heal. Ultimately it doesn't matter. The damage is inside me and healing that damage is my primary responsibility.

Has anyone else been afflicted with this obsessive need to understand why their abusers caused the traumatic damage that they did? I think if I could stop doing this it would bring me a lot of peace.

I would be grateful to hear from anyone else who has been afflicted with this ceaseless searching for an answer to why, and whether they have found an effective way to stop doing it. 

Thank you.
Bluepalm
#7
Poetry & Creative Writing / Painting of a life
May 14, 2021, 10:29:07 PM
I preface this poem by saying that at two levels,

(1) deep down where I started at birth, before life distorted me, and

(2) now, well supported by my anti-depressant medication and functioning pretty well day to day,

I am a happy, open, hopeful, friendly person with an abundance of life energy and creativity which I express freely, including through painting art works. I have had someone say of me that 'people are attracted to you because you have such a strong life spirit'.  Another person, a complete stranger, came up to me and said 'you have a golden aura'.

However these perceptions are deceptive. The impact of trauma never leaves me and unfortunately threatens to overwhelm my natural happiness and life energy unless I am constantly vigilant. I need to work to retain my day to day functioning. That work is a constant reminder of how trauma is embedded in my body like rusty nails deep in wood, threatening the strength of the structure that is my life.

At the level of those rusty nails, this is how I feel my life looks inside me. This is what threatens to overwhelm the surface functioning. Take away the support of medication and this dark vision is where I will naturally reside.

Portrait of a life

Most of the canvas is clouded with blackness
swirling, suffocating, down to the bone blackness,
interrupted here and there by violet explosions of rage,
and jagged cadmium yellow marks,
where ideas of self destruction predominate.


There are innumerable areas where
watery prussian blue tears of despair
have caused the paint to run down the canvas.
In fact the whole painting is in danger of slipping off the canvas,
undermined by grief, by a sense of life unlived.


The life that is the subject of this portrait
must have been untethered or poorly grounded,
distorted by the effects of human cruelty,
too early and too often,
longing for the relief of being rubbed off the canvas altogether.

bluepalm

#8
Poetry & Creative Writing / 'Full of Hate'
May 11, 2021, 06:41:20 AM
This poem came to me this afternoon - about two traumatic incidents with my parents that happened to me over 60 years ago.

Full of hate

So, my father stood before me, 
and I was about eight.
My father stood before me
and he was full of hate.

'You are not human' he said.
'You're somewhere between an animal
and a human', he said,
and his voice was full of hate.

'Only boys and men are human', he said.
'Only boys and men are allowed
to speak', he said,
and his voice was full of hate. 

'And because you are not human, 
you have no rights', he said.  
'You have no right to speak', he said,
and his voice was full of hate. 

So silently I turned away.
Thinking, I have less value than the worst of men.
To my father I am less than human, 
and he is full of hate. 

So, I stood by my mother in the kitchen.
She was washing dishes,
staring at the dirty water.
'Am I beautiful?' I asked her.

Silence. Her eyes did not move.

I stood by my mother in the kitchen.
She was washing dishes,
staring at the dirty water.
'Well, am I pretty?' I asked her.

Silence. Her eyes did not move.

I stood by my mother in the kitchen.
She was washing dishes,
staring at the dirty water.
'Well, am I attractive?' I asked her.

Silence. Her eyes did not move.

So silently I stole away to my room.
I must be ugly, I thought.
To my mother I am ugly, 
and she is full of hate. 

bluepalm
#9
Although I usually think of myself as a survivor of what happened to me from infancy onwards, I'm also a retired lawyer and recently a poem came to me in the legalistic form of a victim impact statement.

Victim Impact Statement

You damaged me irretrievably

You stole any possibility of my feeling safe, contented, warmed, loved, wanted, precious

You condemned me to a lifetime of isolation and loneliness

You deprived me of human touch and acceptance

You made me feel I was living in a war zone - hungry, thirsty, frightened

And you did it with malice aforethought

You were evil
#10
Medication / Medication for nightmares
May 08, 2021, 10:54:38 AM
I experience debilitating nightmares several times a week. Over recent months my nightmares have reached back nearly 70 years and focused on my childhood home, now long demolished, and my parents, now long dead.

The sense of exhaustion and misery resulting from a nightmare this week, in which my mother created destructive chaos around me, lasted a couple of days and sent me looking to see if there was any medication that might address this problem. I thought it unlikely because in the past I've assumed that only talking therapy could help address nightmares, through analysing them for insights and understanding.

However, my initial research found that a medication called Prazosin has been used to lessen nightmares. 

See: https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(12)00667-2/fulltext

I intend to ask my GP to consider helping me with my nightmares and would be interested in hearing about the experience of anyone who has taken Prazosin or any other medication prescribed to lessen/subdue/banish nightmares.
With thanks,
bluepalm
#11

The Blue Knot Foundation in Australia (www.blueknot.org.au) has recently released a paper to help the general public discuss relational trauma. I thought this might be a resource that Members could provide to help people around them discuss and better understand what they, as survivors of relational trauma, experience. The Foundation describes its Guide as follows:

'
Members of the general public are becoming more aware of the prevalence of trauma and how it can affect people. However, many people feel poorly equipped to have everyday conversations with people they know or suspect have actually experienced trauma.
[/i]

'
Talking about trauma: guide to everyday conversations for the general public provides a simple guide, in plain English, to support these critical conversations. Whether you are starting the conversation yourself (because you suspect a person is experiencing/has experienced trauma) or you are responding to a person telling you about their trauma. The following information, evidence and tips will help you manage the challenges and minimise the risks.
[/i]'

You can register and download a copy of this Guide for free at the following link:

http://www.blueknot.org.au/Resources/Publications/Talking-about-trauma/Talking_About_Trauma_Public


#12
The Blue Knot Foundation in Australia has recently released a new report entitled 'Complex Trauma Spotlight Report - Living with and Healing from Complex Trauma'. The Foundation describes this report as follows:

"This Spotlight Report was commissioned by the National Mental Health Commission in recognition of the significant need to build awareness and understanding of the often chronic and largely unmet needs of people living with the long-term impacts of complex trauma. This report reviews the current research and practice into complex trauma and experiences of people with a lived experience of complex trauma – how they have engaged with the system and how the systems have responded to their needs. It highlights the chasm between needs and the system's capacity to meet them, to support healing and recovery, minimise experiences of re-traumatisation and to be heard, respected and supported to live meaningful participating connected lives.

The report may be downloaded from the Blue Knot Foundation website: https://www.blueknot.org.au/Resources/Publications/Spotlight-Report

#13
For over a year now, my local chemist has dispensed a particular generic brand of Fluoxetine antidepressant when I filled my GP's prescription. When originally asked if I would accept a generic brand  of fluoxetine, I did not hesitate, assuming that the active ingredient would be identical to that in the original brand, Prozac. I tolerated this particular generic brand well and over some weeks I experienced a growing sense of emotional stability and ceased the constant crying, suicidal ideation, bursts of anger, acute startle reflexes, rumination and other symptoms of deep depression which had overtaken me, yet again, when  I decided, with the chemist's advice to help me, to slowly cease taking my previous anti-depressants (Lexapro) altogether - thinking I was well enough to manage without. 

What I learnt from that experience is that I cannot risk being without the help of antidepressants because, despite living a secure and undemanding retirement life, physically and emotionally removed from my abusers, without the help of antidepressants my body reverts to the state in which i lived for most of my life - struggling with deep depression. The involuntariness of the constant crying amazes me - the grief feels overwhelming, paralysing and absolutely out of my control.

Two weeks ago I was unexpectedly dispensed another generic brand of fluoxetine. The chemist said my previous generic brand of fluoxetine had become unavailable in Australia. I thought nothing of it and assumed the change would be seamless.

How wrong I was. Within a few days I felt my mood lowering dangerously as my mind became lost in rumination, suicidal feelings and despair and the tears started to flow ceaselessly. I returned to my chemist and explained I was feeling nausea and had no appetite and felt my mood lowering. The chemist advised taking ginger for the nausea. Within two more days I was becoming frightened of my fixation on thoughts of self-destruction and went back to the chemist and explained I felt the drug was not working and I was becoming in danger. The chemist said my original brand was still not available and did I want to try another generic brand or persist with the current one. I decided to persist but made an appointment with my GP to ask for his help. However, I returned to the chemist the very next day frightened, unable to stop crying, and pleaded with them to help me. It turned out that they had just been restocked with my original generic brand  - apparently the packaging was being redesigned - so they dispensed those and I have now taken nine days of my original generic brand.

Two days ago, in the middle of the day, I suddenly became aware that I'd crossed a threshold, that I'd surfaced, that I had regained my footing in the present day world and could pay more attention to 'now' without being dragged back into recriminations and ruminations and unending grief. I'm still not back to where I was three weeks ago but I feel confident that I'm getting better.

I'm sharing this experience because I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has had a similar experience when changing between generic brands of fluoxetine or any other antidepressants. I've lost confidence in generic brands now and will talk to the my GP tomorrow about whether it would be better to take the original brand, Prozac, assuming that it is reliably available in this country.
Thank you for reading.
Bluepalm
#14
I hesitate to write this because there are so many people suffering terribly at the moment, but I feel so surprised at my body's paradoxical reaction to being 'locked down' in the midst of a pandemic that I want to record my reaction to see if any others who are affected by CPTSD feel similarly.

I am an elderly woman who lives alone (with two dogs). I will shortly turn 72 years old, have a recent history of illness from flu and pneumonia, and I'm probably considered high risk for a severe illness if I catch this contagion. I live in a rural location, physically remote from any family or long-term friends, with limited access to hospital facilities. If I become ill, it is likely I will need to manage it myself, alone at home, and I could well die alone at home. In recognition of this I have now arranged for the RSPCA to rescue and re-home my dogs if I become critically ill, because I have no-one else to help me do that.

Nevertheless, I feel safer and more relaxed than I ever have before. I feel protected in a way I have never felt before. After an initial few nights of nightmares and waking screaming, my sleep is now restful. My dreams are warm and sensuous in a way I've never previously experienced during my entire life. I feel cocooned in a way I've never felt before. As far as I am concerned, I wish this state of 'lock-down' would continue forever until I die and am safely off this earth.

The essence of the change is that I am protected from other people in a way I've never been before. No-one will come to my front door and expect to come inside. I no longer need to wish I could build a brick wall across my front door to keep people away. I do not need to engage in any activities with people (other than virtual ones). I feel 'the law is on my side' in keeping other people away from me, even when I am out walking my dogs. In short, I no longer need to struggle with my raw vulnerability, my continuing inability to set boundaries to keep people from hurting me.

My body's reaction feels amazing to me. My sense of safety and relaxation amazes me. It is a deep bodily 'letting go' of vigilance at a time when the whole world is in fact being told to be vigilant against Covid-19. For me, this situation is the first time I can genuinely relax what has been an ever-present state of extreme vigilance, not against a virus, but against the pain other people inflict on me.

And it is throwing into sharp relief how 'under siege', how profoundly threatened, how deeply dangerous I have experienced the world and other people to be throughout my life, including and most importantly my immediate family. It is throwing into sharp relief how I've carried a deeply wounded body, mind and soul through the years.

In a small way, I feel my body's reaction to feeling protected from other people in the middle of a global pandemic, the fact that my body reacts to protection from people more than it worries about dying from a virus, is yet more evidence (as if more were needed) of how important it is to protect children from the injuries caused by abandonment, abuse, neglect and other adverse experiences. And how important it is to provide access to effective treatments for those who've suffered relational trauma. I do hope this mass experience of trauma will accelerate understanding of these needs.

And for me, it's as if I've been given a small glimpse of what life must feel like for people who've experienced bonding, security, attachment, love, touching, kindness and warm human connection.

I'm grateful for this unexpected blessing from a tragedy.

#15
Successes, Progress? / Cutting my tormentors down to size
February 21, 2020, 09:09:06 PM
I dreamt last night that I was still with my former husband and suddenly realised very clearly that the marriage must end and I accomplished that almost immediately ; in that I asked him to go and he went out the front door and, after turning once to threaten to punch me in the face,  he walked away. In real life, nearly 40 years ago, it had taken me many many months of painful turmoil to convince my husband that our marriage must end (a marriage in which my husband said he felt 'complacently happy') and there were many moments when I felt I would not survive the process. Certainly I knew that I could not go on living if I had to continue living with my husband.

Waking from this dream this morning, I have felt a new freedom and realised how I have inflated my tormentors in my mind for so many years.

Recently I have been talking with my therapist about how the pattern of abandonment, neglect and abuse that I experienced with my parents was carried on through my marriage and then carried on to my life with my adult sons (although not with my sons during their childhood, thank goodness). It has been a long and reluctant process for me to acknowledge that my adult sons display characteristics and  behaviour towards me that mirrors that of my husband and my parents.

It is painful to acknowledge that my adult children distress me, trigger me, in ways that infiltrate every day of my life. This is not how life should be and it's hard not to feel ashamed of my urge to run away from them to escape the threat. After all, they are still my babies, my life has revolved around caring them and I know that they have limited control over how they are as people, given that we are all creatures of our DNA inheritance through the ages.

This dream has somehow allowed me to realise how I have inflated my husband and my adult sons in my mind so they have the size and presence of my huge parents, looming over me, threatening and frightening me when I was an absolutely helpless infant and tiny child. 

Something about my ability to get my husband to walk out the front door in my dream has allowed me to realise that I can cut these people 'down to size',  I can release the sense of looming threat and shame that I carry inside when I think of them. It's a holdover from the trauma of my infancy.

I feel this freedom to see  them at a 'normal' size will be good for our relationships as well as for my peace of mind.

However, because I'm not sure if this sense of freedom will last, although I dearly hope so, I wanted to record my realisation here on OOTS to see if that will help me hold onto it.

And also to ask if anyone else has had a realisation that their tormentors in adulthood loom in their mind with the same enormously inflated size as the tormentors of their childhood.
#16
Poetry & Creative Writing / The impulse to cling
January 15, 2020, 12:33:10 AM

The impulse to cling

I was never allowed to cling
to anyone.
Not to mother or father
or husband,
and now not to children either.

The impulse to cling is deep,
fundamental, primitive,
and, if constantly denied,
seems to persist forever, 
leaving me achingly bereft.
#17
Poetry & Creative Writing / Hunger denied
November 25, 2019, 12:09:51 AM
Working with my therapist this past week reminded me of a little poem I wrote years ago that encapsulates a central cause of the suffering that continues to trouble me on a daily basis more than 70 years later....

Hansel and Gretel ate the house.
Nibbled at it like a mouse.
I shut my mouth and hunger denied.
To save my mother, my soul, it died.


bluepalm
#18
I'm struggling with shame and guilt today, berating myself yet again for terrible choices I made that have led to so much pain; principally getting caught in a dreadful marriage straight from a dreadful childhood. But pitted against my shame and guilt today is a new understanding about developmental arrests that I'm getting from reading Pete Walker's wonderful book 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving'. His writing is giving me a stronger sense of what I was 'up against' in trying to protect myself from predators all those years ago. I knew even then that I was terribly poorly equipped to make good life decisions, but I can see now that it was not through my own failures that I was left so poorly equipped. I had been deprived of what a baby girl needs in order to learn how to protect herself in this world. 

I wrote the following poem when I first entered therapy as a young woman, expressing how it felt then to be trying to manage my life while constantly lost in self-doubt, shame and fear.

Flitting shade-like, hugging the walls

Flitting shade-like,
hugging the walls
along the corridors of my mind
they come quite silently,
my devils,
and silently they lay me waste.

Doubts come confidently,
ceaselessly,
arrogant in their sureness,
aware of the multitudes
that creep persistently
behind them.

Hot shame pants quietly,
doggedly,
sure of its mark,
certain that its touch
will scorch, that its heat
will burn holes in
my wholeness.

Fear sneaks and springs
and darts through any crack,
cutting through freshly grown
roots, severing the tender tendrils
of my being, throwing the earth
in my eyes.

And as defence I seem to have
so little.
My forces stand unsteadily beside me,
unformed as yet into coherent cohorts,
unable to spring as one at my command.
They engage in swift uncoordinated forays,
retreating for rest at
too soon intervals,
leaving me vulnerable, afraid, teetering.

bluepalm
#19
------Trigger Warning - thoughts of suicide------

This morning I was reading articles discussing 'chronic' suicidality, and what 'chronic' conveyed and how best to describe constant thoughts and/or multiple attempts at suicide.   

https://themighty.com/2018/07/complex-trauma-how-to-live-with-chronic-suicidality-ptsd/?platform=hootsuite
https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2017/11/kronikk/chronically-suicidal

What struck me was how lucky someone could be, to be in such a safe place that they could consider intellectually whether the use of the word 'chronic' was helpful or harmful. I understand the helpfulness of this consideration. I appreciate the thought that goes into considering 'tips' to deal with such thoughts. And I feel so lucky that there is a sense of calm detachment now for me in my reading these interesting articles this morning.

The contrast between my current calm detachment this morning and what I remember as being the sticky, molasses-like turmoil of being caught in such feelings is sharp. I have been caught in these feelings in recent months, they hover always on the edge of my life, I can probably never fully escape them. And they have dominated my mind too often to count during my life.

I remembered a poem I wrote in the past about being so caught in a life lived 'skirting death' where I linked this to its cause - the void inside me that was caused by the hostile abuse and neglect I experienced from those into whose care I was born.

Being able to remember this and now know that my thoughts were a natural result of my circumstances - and that my poem (written well before the concept of CPTSD was formulated) was an accurate depiction of this - is one of the many ways in which having the framework of complex PTSD to understand my lived experience helps me.


It is impossible

It is impossible to pin pain down in words.
Words cannot stretch around
The aching, irrevocable sense of loss
that comes from a life lived
skirting death,
flirting with death,
taking death to heart
as the ultimate comfort.

It is impossible to fill words
with the feel of fear.
Thin words can never  encompass
the suffocating endless blackness
that comes when there is no human comfort to be had.
Long moments lost in panic,
endless moments spent running,
frantic for relief.


bluepalm
#20
This poem was written during a recent rough patch upon my waking from a dream of being kissed that led me to fall back on the question that has haunted me all my life: why was I not loved?

It is really hard, even as an adult, not to feel it's all my fault. Even though I now know, intellectually anyway, that the reason lies in the personality or developmental disorders affecting my parents and my husband, not in some inherent defects in me, it's really hard not to fall back on blaming and shaming myself as I did, unquestioningly and constantly, as a child.

Why was I not loved and kissed?

How do I express the anguish
of a lifetime lived
without experiencing
a genuine
loving kiss
from my parents
or my husband?

Two quick kisses
in a dream
feel intensely wonderful.
But it's only a dream.
Only my sleeping mind
giving me an illusion
of being loved.

How to explain this?

It is hard not to feel
I stand on this earth
untouchably ugly, unlovable,
deformed, repellent,
isolated by the hostility and fear
that my very existence seems to generate
in those who are supposed to love me.