Getting cold

all of a sudden – on the left side of my body – goose bumps – as if there’s a draft, or even

a ghost?

huh.

re-tracing mental steps.

poem

started to be ‘creative’

internal ‘judge’

laughed
mocked
made fun of

said, ‘how stupid’ - *you’re* no artist, why *fool* yourself?

my father gave away some of my mother’s paintings, for free, at random, when they moved from one house to another – as they were moving into the new house, the new neighbor saw him carrying a painting

this is third hand, my recollection of a story my mom told – I was too young to remember the incident, or perhaps wouldn’t have understood it if I’d witnessed it? or, perhaps, would have understood the *emotional* content of my mother’s shame. Though I think she – suppressed it? Or, she tells it as a story that happened to someone else.

which is why she’s able to ‘distance’ so easily from *my* emotions – she can’t feel her own.

But this is about ME.

***
My father’s voice is the one that tells me my feelings and needs are stupid.

With my *mother*, it’s her FACE – her scowls, her frowns, the look of constant disapproval, that little fold in between her eyes that tells me she doesn’t like what I’m saying.

***
I am cold, I am shaking. I am unable to get warm without an external heat source.

I have no *internal* heat source because I

was never LOVED
in the ways I NEEDED to be LOVED

by my parents.