I was a little girl once.

I was an awkward little girl. Everything would confuse me. I would sit on my father’s lap and know I made him sad. I would ask why and he would deny it. I would see my mother cry and ask her why she was sad and she would deny it too.

I only knew it was my fault. I knew that I was ignorant, that I said the wrong thing and everything I did was silly. I was stupid, ugly and it was my fault that people wanted to give up on me.

I can’t remember a time without the strain of denied unhappiness. Denied unhappiness is the worst kind. I felt a dread, a deep ocean dread that makes everything hazy and heavy. We could not speak of it or even acknowledge it and when I tried to I made it all worse. I was the cause of all the pain and I wished I could disappear to make it all better for people again.

I grew up slowly and I grew up fast. There was no time for childhood in my childhood. I mocked girls who were loved. I laughed at their weak, foolish delusions and at how spoiled they were. My mother encouraged me in this and my father looked at me sadly and I knew that if I were a better girl that I could have been like those girls; sweet smelling and innocent. They were cherry blossom. I knew they were loved. Those stupid girls, those sun kissed girls, those cherry blossom girls.

I was all grown up by ten. I had learned deceit and denial. I had learned to bitterly fold in on myself and accept my lot in life. I would still dream and when I woke up I would find I had scratched my face or my chest. There would be skin under my nails and blood on my pillow. We all ignored this and waited for me to accept myself and descend without a fight to where I was supposed to be.

I accepted myself for years. I accepted that I should be hurt and ignored. I accepted that the cherry blossom girls were to be pitied for their lack of understanding of how cold the world was. I envied them too but I knew that was a stupid, laughable feeling. I was forever out of their pack. I was resin, a dark, sticky, irritating substance sticking to the bark of the tree of life.

I was struck dumb when I met you. Struck dumb by the choices I had made, caught still in the amber of my life.  I knew that my parents had old hurts passed on to them before and that their sadness was not my fault.  I knew they gave me their sadness only to keep me safe, to keep me from hoping for anything more. I ached still. I was in pain when I thought too hard. I had tried to build a life and lost so many times. I lost only the invisible things. I seemed to be doing so well stuck in the respectable choices I had made, I had chosen a respectable path and a good life. I sat still in it with my back ramrod straight.

It hurt to meet you. It hurt to see your eyes. It hurt to hear your breath in my ear and to feel your hand over mine. It wasn’t like being born, birth is soft and new, birth has pliable skin and wide eyes. Instead it was forcing my way from some dark cave, though rubble and thorns. I was dirty and bruised, ravenous for sustenance and grabbing at anything I could get.

There was nothing delicate about it.

Except the love, except the whispers and the kisses, they were delicate. They were a hint at the love that waited for me.

I remember leaving you in those first months, as I drove away from our visits I would sob and retch as I took myself home. Blinded by tears and pain I could not understand why I wept. Now it is obvious, it was my rebirth and entering the world is always painful, the light is a shock even when loving arms reach out to hold you tight.

I could have hated you at first for the hope. The hope was like a bruise. Every time I thought I could be loved I hurt more than I could ever have dreamed possible. I had loved before, felt was I thought was love before and each time had been hurt, often by good men but they were the wrong men and I hurt. I did not want to try to live, to try to come alive. You knew this and you stayed still as I told you I wanted you to go, as I told you it was too hard to try to live again, as I tried to push myself back into the hold of my old life.

I came to you knowing everything about myself and my life. Within weeks I knew nothing at all. I could have torn at you. I could have ripped you apart for bringing uncertainty to me. I ran for miles and miles through the woods. Each step was a question and I never ran far enough for the answer. I wore myself out hunting for truth and for what I really am.

The true horror was at night. I would lie awake and dream of you. I would search myself out, arch my back and from hundreds of miles away you would whisper in my ear all those sweet forbidden words that I was never meant to hear. But worse, when I came I would call back to you. I would say that words that were forbidden to girls like me. My eyes would fly open and I would sit up in the dark. I would hate myself for that hope. I would stare at the dark trying to will myself to unsay the words I had set free. I would mock myself for being so stupid, for being deluded.

You did not stop loving me. You still do not stop loving me.

You do not stop loving me when I am angry, awkward, when I test you and when I push you as hard as I ever could push anyone. I lie with half truths. I lied to myself. I shove us both. In truth I find a life of pain easier than I life where I am safe and loved.

You never stop loving me.

Now, you pick words from my head like flowers from a field and present them to me. This is a gift you have.  I do not say these words to you. I don’t hint but you find them and you say them out loud. I have no idea how you do this. I have asked you many times and you tell me that you know because you love me.

And then, you let me say the words that a girl like I was has no right to say. I stammered them at first. I clutched tightly to your neck and whispered them in your ear. I remember how it took me hours. Really, it had taken me years.

And now, I speak these words freely. Forbidden words that should be out of my reach, I pluck them eagerly each day. I throw them around me like cherry blossom and sit amongst the petals and laugh.

You recreated me. You show me how I can tell the truth and still be loved. You show me how I can be loved. You love me like I did not dare to dream of being loved.

When I leave you or you leave me, I cry. I think you cry too. I think we both remember a life before we found each other. I think we remember a colder, darker life where we lived with determination and resolve, like tired ill trained soldiers marching in the rain.

We found each other though. We found each other despite us being neatly ensconced in the wrong lives, despite having the approval of society, despite everything.

You have made me a better person. You make me a better person. When I met you I did not think I believed in love. I certainly did not think I was capable of loving or of being loved.

You love me. I love you. We have stronger hearts now.

I don’t have the words for all this. But I keep on trying, don’t I? My writing meanders, I should stop but I don’t want to.

You gave me back my faith, faith I never had in my whole life. I know what the old films are about now. I understand those grandiose statements in airports and train stations. I understand the softly spoken words and music that nudges at your heart.

I love you. You love me.

You made me a little girl again. I am a happy, loved, cherry blossom little girl whose life is an adventure. I look at you and I know what faith is and what it is for.

I love you. You love me.

I will keep writing that in a million ways my whole life long.