As A Girl

       At dinner the other night, there was a family of four at the table next to me. An adorable little Asian girl was completely absorbed in her coloring book, barely paying attention to her parents as they asked her what she wanted for dinner. She answered them without even looking up.
       Something about that scene struck me. The parents weren’t freaking out that their daughter wasn’t giving them her undivided attention. They seemed to get that she was involved in something very important to her at the moment, and the decision about what to eat could be handled without fanfare. There was an ease and a calm between all of them, and a respect for where the little girl was at. Everybody, it appeared, was, at the moment, getting just what they needed.
       That touched me. And it sparked some sort of internal astral projection of all the women I’ve been intimate with that didn’t get what they needed growing up, and how that showed up in our relationship. In a flash, all I could see were the faces of some of the women I’ve loved. Women who, when I looked into their eyes, I could see and feel the little scars of pain and longing and sadness that were left over from childhood.
       We all carry those scars. Some of us are just better at hiding them. And some of us are better at seeing them, no matter how hard people try to hide them.
       Then I had this fantasy; that I could go back in time, to when these women I loved were little girls. And, as an adult, I would just shower them with love, and attention, and joy, and support, and mirror for them whatever they needed. I would be the adult who didn’t leave any scars.
       As adults, we have the opportunity to heal these scars through our intimate relationships. That healing takes a certain commitment, a certain attitude, an openness, and a certain enlightenment protocol that’s somewhat outside the norm of, say, traditional love relationships. It takes a desire to explore and dig and grow and do things a little different.
       I can’t go back in time. But I can be a better man today. In doing that, I heal myself. And I serve in the healing of the woman I love.
    

I wish I knew you
When you were just a little girl
Before I knew you as the woman
Who’s toes I would curl

If I knew you then
I would give to you all you didn’t get
From the adults in your life
All those needs that did not get met

Loving you now
I saw inside
I looked
I found
I loved
What you could not hide


©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.