Why was I not loved and kissed?

[bluepalm]

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. 

[woodsgnome]

Thanks for creating these powerful, beautiful, and meaningful words. Language will never undo the raw loneliness and abandonment, but sometimes it helps supply at least some needed balm for the raw parts the soul is feeling.



   

[RiverRabbit]

When it has never been a part of your life, you tend to not miss it... and do not think its absence is of note.

... but when it is shown to be missing... and the floor-dropping effect of seeing the staggering hole in your life, from its inception hits.  You can be kind of forced into a pause.

The quiet before an awakening...