Something I wish didn’t matter

“It hurt because it mattered.”

JG

I cannot even begin to explain of how much importance this moment is to me. “It’s a teenage girl finding comfort in her mother’s shoulder, what’s so special about it?” must you ask. And I look at you with a hundred million emotions in my eyes, a surmount of feelings that develop inside of me looking at this picture, this moment. It’s not just a teenage girl finding comfort in her mother’s shoulders; it is all that I have ever wanted and more. I have yearned for it for years and years and on and on. I have wanted this so much. I have wanted this so much and it hurts me so much that I have now convinced myself that this is not what I’m longing for. This wait, this hope, I have given upon it.
You see them playing the piano together, their comfort activity. You see acceptance, and love, for just how Kate is. What might seem like a hobby to you encapsulates the entirety of the painful longing I have had to carry without even knowing that I did for 19 long years. And I still am. Oh what would I not give up on this universe to be able to do something with my mother that we both commonly enjoy and sit together and laugh at, look at each other lovingly for a minute before going back to whatever we were doing. Ah the sweet sorrow that I feel.

As I write this, my mind wants to lovingly picture us together, laughing. But it just cannot, I cannot. I am too scared to picture that moment. I am too scared to let myself feel that moment, even if I’m making it all up in my head right now, even if it’s not really real. I am too scared to not pretend I do not want this. For I am too scared to fall in love with this idea in my head that she can love me for who I am, that she’ll be proud of me for all I’ve done, that she can sit with me contently without hating me. I am too scared I will go ahead and fall in love with this stupid idea again, and be irreparably broken again. I cannot let myself want all of this and asphyxiate everytime under the crushing boulder that I will only hear her be ashamed and hate me. So I tell myself I do not want this. And then I fuckup once again. What more do you expect of a 19 year old with all this pain that he’s shoveling away?