How Healthy Love After Childhood Abuse is Tricky but NOT Impossible 

The Bread Makers (for my loaf of T): 

The bread was home made and constant.

For months, he brought me loaves

to take or tear open.

After our first kiss

he bought me one.

“You already have a bread maker,”

my friend Heidi said, “Him.”

She knew I was afraid

I lacked the ingredients

or time

to use his gift.

At first, I felt only pressure

to make

and the fear

of failing to rise.

To fall in

love

while afraid

was terrifying.

Fear, I had to name over and over again.

Fear, I had to guide into the backseat like a new puppy.

I’d reach my hand behind my back when I was driving

and she barked or whined.

I’d have to move her body when she tried to get into my lap

or under foot.

Screaming no does not work without a yes to move into.

Fear couldn’t stop jumping without a bone, toy or distraction,

not because it was bad, but young, untrained and new to the world.

I had to learn to patience,

to help her settle in and down

which I’ve not mastered

but practice.

Our love became a broth

that simmers on the pot

stirred

by a wooden spoon

we take turns holding.

He chops onions

and I cut pepper.

Mushed garlic perfumes

another pan.

 

We fight

to give each other

the end piece

which we both favor,

where flavor coagulates, gets crusted and cornered.

How come ends of bread are also beginnings?

“No, for you,”we both say buttering or holding out the best slice and waiting.

Who will bend and bite, give in or allow?

Who lead? follow? nourished? devoured?

What are the rules in a relationship between two givers?

He is seeing

I am sawing.

Each of us must take turns

rising and grounding

so we can

both feel balanced.

A recipe doubled, not halved

can feed more and for longer

if we can figure out how to keep it fresh.

But the rules of enough

are more unfamiliar than struggle.

The plastic parmesan in my cabinet seems inadequate,

I want to grate cheese

he will lick off tongue and fingers

the base of warmth,

the texture of desire

will have to do

even as some of my cabinets

are not fully stocked.

“You need taking care of,” he said

when I was sick.

“You take care of me,” I said, “And so do I.”

“No you don’t,” he said on his way into the bathroom, “only after you take care of others.”

In the past, this would have seemed a compliment,

now I know I can be like Wonder Bread that stays white and doesn’t mold

not because it’s healthier or better – just pumped with chemicals.

I don’t want to preserve emptiness.

“May I put…?”

he asks.

“Yes please,” I said, before he’s finished.

We were standing in the dark on my deck.

I have wanted a motion sensing light for five years.

“Knowing light is needed doesn’t make me an electrician,” I said.

“They come with batteries that last a year” he said.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, wondering what other darkness

I could brighten up if I stopped trying to adjust to being blind.

I hate how good I am at being cold and without a flashlight.

No one needs or likes a martyr and I have filled that statue for decades.

Just nights before I told him of my childhood,

abuse and abandonment sandwiched under my skin.

Tears salted the clam chowder he had served, words spilled off the spoon of my tongue.

At least, at midlife, I have stopped apologizing.

My past is not a reason or excuse why I do or don’t anything I don’t want to.

Nothing makes it delicious.

Nothing makes it easier to say or swallow.

Still, nothing chases the truth better than truth.

I feared he’d run but knew I’d let him.

Who and how I am no longer comes with an apology.

I am not shelved in the bargain bin where some hunt sales for damaged goods.

She who can get hurt, stay sane and sober without turning mean or bitter

gets to hang with the moon.

I do.

I am.

This does not mean I wasn’t wounded, pained or injured.

I was.

Young child me failed

to illicit a maternal response,

and “attracted”perversion,

I used to say inside myself to explain abuse.

It helped me get through childhood but makes me suspicious

of love that is kind

and coming towards me.

I will weather the discomfort of this adjustment and forget how it feels to have the soul ravaged.

Bread man takes photos from his book of recipes and shares them via text.

I improvise and sample, add raisins (which work), use wheat flour, (a disaster).

We do not cook the same but love bread equally.

So much now to taste and share:

get-well toast when ill,

extra slices for a neighbor’s sandwich

and enough in the morning still to make my daughter’s breakfast.

To learn at midlife,

this secret.

No one need go hungry

in love,

in relationship

with two bread makers!