rents

i love my parents out of duty, not out of affection that grows from being shown love. i didn't realize what i was missing until encountering two epiphanies:

1. Meeting people who love their parents and choose to spend time with them
2. Having children of my own and enjoying them, not acting as if they are in the way.

That said, it has been a challenging couple of years as my mother deteriorates cognitively and psychically. She went into a nursing home two weeks ago, under the impression that she was going to go home after rehabilitation, but it doesn't look as though she can. Her needs are so great my father cannot care for her at home.

Whenever i visit her, she is able to attend most of the time- conversation vacillates between sharp memories and questions about what day it is. However, she always says to me, and i imagine others, "I just want to go home." And when she says this, i find my empathy for her growing, in a way i haven't felt since a child.

moons

i don't know exactly when i fell in love with Noire. i had told her months before that i loved her, but only came to believe it last August. Or maybe September.

The odd thing is that it is a different love. The love i had with ExA was the last of that breed, starting with Esme, passing off to Daisy and ending up with her. When i thought about it, i realized i could love Noire and it didn't need to be what i had known. What i had known had failed me, and when it came to reinventing normal, there was Noire.

While the same obstacles loom (her wanting kids and marriage), there is no immediacy to their presence; she will go her way when she needs to, i will still have a life to live, one that revolves around The Land and The Sea, with the cold silent satellites of what could have been sharing the sky.