Who would want to hug this?

I hold my razor like a pen and use it to write the stories of my pain.  But through the pain, I am beginning to understand who I am.  Why I’m nuts.  Why I hurt.  Every so often, I get flashes of insight.  Tonight was one of those nights.  As I held my freshly bandaged arm and quietly cried (quietly so my roommates wouldn't worry and come in and see the band-aid wrappers and blood-soaked kleenex littering my bed), I re-realized how much I wish I had someone to take care of me.  Someone to hold me when I wanted to slice my arm to ribbons.  So I wouldn’t have to.  It probably wouldn’t truly make it all better.  But it might help. And I think it's too late in life for that someone to be a parent.

Maybe I wasn’t held enough as a child.  Thinking about it, though, I don’t think that’s possible.  I know how much my parents love and adore my ten year old brother.  He’s fifteen years younger than me, so I get the chance to watch him grow up.  And he is loved.  He wants for nothing.  And he was held tightly and lovingly as a child.  As I’m sure I was.

                Maybe it’s just that I wasn’t understood.  I have spent a lifetime wishing I had someone to share me with.  Sometimes I feel like I have something to offer.  But I've never been able to really share myself with anyone.  I've never felt understood.  I’m still not.  But I can’t expect anyone to understand me when sometimes I don’t understand myself.  When I hug myself, I try to tell myself it will be ok; someday someone will be there to understand me.  And I guess I would know, since I am myself.  I just want someone to understand me now. It's nice that I can hug myself and be nice to myself, but it's not enough.

                I guess I need to clarify.  Deep down, I am afraid that if anyone ever fully understood me, they’d walk away shaking their head, wishing they had never peered into the depths of that darkness and absurdity.  Sometimes I wish I could walk away shaking my head.  But I can't.  So Santa, I’d like to ask for someone to understand me and love me in spite of it all.  I’m asking Santa, because it seems like it would take some sort of elven magic to pull it off.  Then again, if I ever really loved someone, I wouldn't want them to see the darkness.  Catch 22.  Darned if I do, darned if I don't.  I’m sure I’ll explore this more later.  For now, I need a hug.