For the love of curls

I like it when you grow your beard and your hair is long. My fingers can can mingle with the curls while I give you head massages to help you get to sleep. Its the closest I can get to you with the three year old between us taking all our space. We've slept on separate edges of the bed for as long as I can remember. Every year I waited for that day when I could take the duvet out of the winter trunk an you'd start hugging me for warmth.

We haven't had a winter in three years, only a growing child horizontally pushing us apart. I was this close to just getting another big bed and moving to the other room with her. I' ve been wanting to wean her for a year, you've been asking when i'll do it. I always answer that we will do it slowly, you always say that I say that every time.

I have come to realize that she has become my comfort. My connection to a deep state of peace. Even if I complain that I still can't wean her, she makes me feel like I am not alone.

I feel alone alot, especially when you look at me with that face. The one that feels like you hate and resent me. The face that holds all your anger and hurt, it shows through your eyes. I know its not all about me but its been so long that the old reasons cant be perceived anymore. I am the only one preventing you from living in peace, in your own reality where everything works as it should and nothing is out place.

I love every single grey hair on your head, I love the smile and laugh you only have for other people. I know, i do it too. Why don't we smile for each other? You look at me, really look at me every few months and notice that my hair is longer, or that I have a scab on my face from anxiously picking a painful pimple. "There is blood on your face", with that voice of disgust, the one that makes me feel insignificant, unworthy of a nice comment. I look down and say, "I know " and walk away.

You say I always have excuses, you always have complaints, or observations, or judgements. I always have excuses because I don't like admitting you are right, when you are. But you are not always right, you just think you are. I make excuses anyway.

I love the way your earlobe has that little shelf of flesh that I can squeeze while you're asleep. Its like a magic fold of skin that only you have and its mine to keep. You used to rub my neck under the duvets, pull my hair back and bite my chin. I miss the need and urgency of that. I miss the way you intertwined your legs with mine to pin me down.

Three days ago I put the little one on a cot next to our bed, you were gone for the day and came home at 3 am. I was awake, alone on our bed and your walls were down, you has been drinking. You had posted a photo with your friendi n a bar, smiling. I saw it while trying to write something meaningless. You came home drunk enough to be free and sober enough to be aware.

It was like it used to be, just not quite. It was wonderful and scary. You looked at me but with confusion, yet not with love. Not with the love you had in your eyes before. That look is gone. Will we ever get it back? I want it back.

Don't you?

Read the next chapter "We do things differently"