Today is Valentine’s Day. It always feels like a day of loss for me. I was thinking about a thing I wrote last month about the former tenants of my nervous system:

When someone has been abandoned their entire life I feel a special sort of sadness for them. They could have lived within my nervous system as long as they needed to and I never would have kicked them out. It was always a free gift given freely . . . there was never a bill coming due. It was enough for me that they felt safe. I let them stay because I loved them. Someone once loved me in that way and I have never forgotten what it felt like. That love is beyond words— it must be felt. If you live long enough you will come to see how rare that sort of love is. You are beyond lucky if you experience it even once. And yet you cannot force them to stay because staying would require them to believe that they are worthy of it. They were all worthy of it. I still feel their absence in my body every day.

Yeah . . .