Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

The Prompt: What do you love most about yourself? What do you love most about your favorite person? Are the two connected?

About myself? Ha, that’s some interesting timing. This has been an intense week for me on multiple fronts and I’m not feeling much in the way of self-love. I tried all my tricks yesterday to break this formation of anger and hate and resentment that’s settled in my chest. None of them worked. So finding something about myself that I love right now?

I survive? I’m not a joyful person, nor a believer. I do not often have a good attitude and I certainly don’t have many worldly goods to mark my life here on earth.  I do appreciate what I have – a home, food, heat, clothing, a laptop, etc.

But I survive, I figure it out and I find a way to protect my sanity. Is that something to love? It isn’t likely to bring much in the way of comfort or pleasure in the coming years, but I’m not really afraid of growing old and being poor. I’ll find a way to survive. When I was a kid and poor and abused by the systems, I had no faith it would get better, but I hung in there.

What’s amusing (not) is that just this morning my cyberstalker and an abusive (sad) friend from the past resurfaced on Facebook. I got through those incidents and sidestepped the current ones, but it bugs me that I can’t seem to shake these people even with blocking, etc.

My favorite person is Ledcat, obviously. What do I love most about her? I love how smart she is – she’s one of the brightest people I’ve ever known and very very well-informed on current events. But I equally love how much she loves our cats. I’m smiling just thinking about her quiet conversation with them while she’s squeezing, feeding, trimming nails, etc. She has voices for each of them. It is totally adorable.

Is there a connection? Well, I suppose my survival skills have a lot to do with the fact that I am also smart and focused on current events.  I think we are well-matched when it comes to smarts and that’s a good thing. And obviously as my stories illustrate, cats are survivors even in treacherous conditions with other cats, dogs, baby gates to climb, etc. Even when there’s only (gasp) dry food for dinner.

When you grow up with resiliency as your “pro” rather than being cherished, protected and nurtured, perhaps finding yourself with someone who has those skills – even for the cats – is a sign of good fortune?

So I guess I hung in there, sometimes by the edge of my nails, until I could meet this wonderful woman and witness nearly every day the tenderness she brings to my world. Precious agrees.