Psychic Kiss

I have a gift. I am psychic. Yep, psychic. You may or may not believe in that sort of thing, but I can tell you it's true. I can prove it. I knew the moment I met you that we would wind up here. Just like I knew our first date would unleash a firestorm in my core. The first time you touched me made my heart race. We merely brushed up against each other, but it was enough to set off a frenzy. The first time you hugged me I felt a surge of excitement and I didn’t want it to end. But, the first time we kissed answered all of my questions.

The prospect of the kiss was almost too much. Almost. The anticipation was the foreplay to what would be our climax. I couldn’t wait and yet I wanted to drag the moment on forever. I knew that once our lips touched, I would know how we fit. I would know.

The way you enveloped me in your arms was a clue. You are a tender soul. The way you looked into my eyes with adoration. Respect. You bent down to reach me. I could feel the soft brush of your breath on my lips. Breathe, just breathe. The heat became intense between us. The current easily set off another clue. We had chemistry. My heart raced. And in one fluid move our lips met for the first time. Magic.

It would be this one kiss, our first, which told me all I needed to know. I’m in love.


Addicted

A friend and I were having a conversation the other day. “Have you ever been addicted to anything?” he asked me. My immediate response was, “No, I don’t have an addictive personality.” I was so sure of myself. I know without a doubt I have issues with anxiety, but not addiction. Oh sure, there was that time I thought I was addicted to gum, but that was more of a phase. Just like my short stint with smoking, just a phase. No problem quitting anything whatsoever.

I go through my days doing the same thing over and over. It only recently occurred to me that there was one thing that I repetitively do throughout the day everyday. It doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, I stop and perform my ritual. I apply and reapply lip balm. In fact, I am addicted to lip balm. I own about 30 of them and I love them all. I love trying new formulas, new flavors and different brands. I even went through a phase where I made my own because I couldn’t find one I loved. A good lip balm needs to have the perfect amount of slip and flavor without being too waxy or sweet.

The funny thing about this is it’s not a secret, everyone knows it. I get lip balm as gifts from friends and family throughout the year, so I never run out. I have my favorites, my old faithfuls, and I carry about three of them in my purse. I have about five of them in my car and I keep them in various places throughout the house. I’m so attached, I once forgot to pack some on vacation and the first thing I did after arriving at the airport was buy some. Once when I went camping I forgot to pack a tube. Luckily the lodge carried a wonderful huckleberry lip balm that was so nice. I still have that one.

So before I go to bed tonight, I will apply one of my favorite lip balms and I will admit to my addiction. And I will thank God there isn’t a 12-step program for my addiction or a meeting, because if there is, I’m not going.

Little Girl

Once upon a time there was a little girl. And for a thousand reasons this little girl was sad. She wasn’t sad because she wanted a toy and didn’t get it. That went without question because her family didn’t have the money. She was painfully aware of that at a young age, so she never asked. No, this little girl was sad because she wanted so much more than toys. She simply wanted to be loved. She wanted someone to worry about her, to look after her. It was simple and yet others had and abundance of it. They were rich. She wanted to be rich too but love wasn’t free. It was too much for her to ask for. She was conditioned to believe a great lie. The Wrath taught her that.

She made every effort to avoid the Wrath, but to no avail. She could only get by for so long and then it would come. She would flinch in anticipation before the strike was made. The Wrath came in various forms. Sometimes, the Wrath was physical and at other times it was emotional and psychological. And most of the time it was a combination of two. Who would notice this little girl and the daily abuse she would suffer for her entire childhood? No one would, because no one would claim to know about the daily ritual. Everyone around her turned a blind eye to her bruises on the inside and out, and she went unnoticed.

As the ritual continued into her early teens, the little girl had all but shut down. She didn't trust another. She looked at an honest complement with a wry eye and wondered why anyone would bother with her. What did they want from her? She didn't believe she was worthy of love and affection from another soul. She worried she might live out her life with a hole in her heart and a head full of frightening memories. At first she tried to stay out of her own head, but with nowhere else to go, she began writing stories, volumes of stories. Each story she wrote with a different pen and each in a different journal. She found peace in her writings no matter how dark or how disturbing. And sometimes she wrote happy stories of all of her hearts desires. She smiled the entire time.

It would take her becoming a young adult before she discovered her inner strength. She never realized how strong she truly was. It wasn’t until she was removed from the ritual did she find her strength had always been there. She was not broken. She discovered she had the capacity to love and be loved. She even discovered that she had compassion for the Wrath who she recognized as a tortured soul. The Wrath believed lies too, lies from his own head. Although she had been beaten down with fists and words by the Wrath, he no longer jailed her. She set herself free.

The little girl was now a grown woman. She looked back on her childhood and found the one thing that kept her safe: Her stories. Unfortunately, she lost all of her writings from her childhood because she destroyed them. The Wrath taught her that too. Still, it was never too late to start again.

Her optimism flowed through her compelling her to move forward. The little girl inside her couldn’t wait to pick out a new journal and a new pen and begin. Once she got started it felt like the most natural thing to her. She found her strength was never lost. After all this time.

I Stuck

Both the washer and dryer are running, my 5-year-old daughter is doing her homework at the kitchen table and I am cooking dinner while helping with her homework. My 2-year-old daughter is in top form and as usual and wants my undivided attention, which is clearly way too divided already. But to appease her and basically ward off the crying for as long as possible, I convince her to bring a toy into the kitchen so I can run from the table to the stove to my 2-year-old, and so everyone is happy.

Because my 2-year-old has decided that although she doesn’t mind going potty in the toilet, she has no intentions on going poop in there, and I have been giving in to her by keeping her in a Pull Up. Now at this point, I should have had a clue that things were going far too smoothly, but I was too busy checking the clothes in the dryer along with homework.

My 2-year-old leaves the room and comes back to tell me she has been to her office to do her business and I can tell by the smell, that its true. I take her hand to go upstairs to change her, but stop in my tracks when I hear the washing machine making a loud banging noise. It is off balance again due to the waterproof mattress cover that throws the thing off every week.

So I tell my 2-year-old to stand by the stairs for a moment and I will be right back. I return after temporarily rectifying the washer issue only to find my 2-year-old with her head stuck between the rails of the stairs. She says to me, “I stuck, Mommy, I stuck.” Leave it to a 2-year-old to point out the obvious. My 5-year-old hears this and comes running to see her sometimes nemesis put in her place.

As I try to free her head from the wood bars, she starts to cry, “I stuck, Mommy, I stuck.” Her Pull Up is completely full and completely stinky, her head is stuck and my 5-year-old thinks this is fantastic. I tell her it is not fantastic at all while I soothe my now scared 2-year-old who has stopped crying, if only temporarily. I ask my 5-year-old to watch her so I can go turn off the stove. I now know that this gave my 5-year-old great pleasure.

I return with a camera to take a picture of my 2-year-old to use as leverage at a later date and then go back to work to release her head. After pulling and pushing and twisting and turning her little head, I finally give up and call my husband at work. My husband, being well educated, Ivy League actually, asked me, “Can’t you just get her head out?” Seriously? I hadn’t thought of that.

My house no longer smells sweet from the delicious pasta sauce or fresh from clean laundry, but now smells of a stinky Pull Up. So I ask myself this, should I try to change her Pull Up while she is standing on the carpeted stairs, or do I make her endure the discomfort and the stench along with the rest of us? We have a very light cream-colored carpet, but my guilt was taking over, so I decided to make a go at it. Lucky for me, my husband walked through the door just as I was about to attempt the changing. We were able to free her head and change her soon after his arrival. She was unscathed physically, but emotionally I wonder as she kept repeating, “Never, never, never again.” She may have actually learned the valuable lesson of “what goes in may not come out.”

And I’ll always have the photo evidence.