The Opposite of a Papercut is a Kiss on the Forehead
When I was a child, my father would pick me up from daycare and call my mother to let her know “the precious package has been secured”. Whenever I’m retold these stories, I always imagine myself packed into a box with the word FRAGILE written and stamped and pasted all over, so no one can say they missed the warning. I am tucked safely inside, bundled in bubble wrap and tissue paper.
I’ve always had a low pain tolerance. My feelings are fragile and my heart is prone to cracks — small, thin fissures making their way through the organ until it breaks completely and I have to figure out how to repair it yet again. Not everyone pays attention to warnings.
When I was 18, I was in love with a man who only knew how to love me when I was struggling to put the pieces of myself back together. I met him a month and a half after I was raped, when my eating disorder and depressive episode had resulted in a drastic 85 pound loss I was desperate to maintain. The version of me he fell in love with was someone who didn’t know how to love themselves, and I think that maybe he found purpose in this new project he’d discovered while going through a pain of his own.
Being his project as opposed to his partner resulted in multiple “papercuts” that were often inflicted when I felt like I was feeling better: lack of communication, lack of intimacy, lack of empathy and compassion. The cycle continued — me feeling better but faltering at his lack of care, unaware of the unhealthy attachment and codependency I’d developed.
Two years later we were through, and I found myself having to learn how to heal on my own. I had grown used to always having someone within arm’s reach that I could depend on when doing it alone frightened me. Now, I had to learn how to hold my own hand, to become comfortable with silence and with feeling alone. I had to become my own best friend — someone I could trust and depend on when I felt there was no one else to trust.
A lot of people say that relationship wounds can only be fully healed after you’ve gotten into another relationship. I believe this to be true. After a year and a half, I had finally learned how to love and trust myself, but I now struggled with being able to trust other people. I had grown afraid of abandonment and of loving people more than they loved me without realizing it.
There is a limit to inner work you can do before you realize you have to put it into practice. One relationship to show me what my new standards to be, and another one to put those standards into practice. Four years after my first breakup and I’ve never been in a relationship as healthy as the one I’m in right now. It feels nice to know that there is someone that has my back, always.
Sometimes I look at my boyfriend and think I might die. I’ve never felt a love like this before; one that feels like it's continuously bubbling, growing, evolving. Like my heart is growing too big for my chest after finally being nourished correctly for once. There is something different about being loved by a pure heart. I think I would go to war for him, Mulan style. I feel like I would do anything to keep him safe. I’ve never had a slow burn meet cute before, but it took six months of me silently pining over him —week after week — for him to finally catch my telepathic hints and give me his number (...and another three weeks for me to figure out if he was actually giving me his number or just his card. But whatever). I say silently, but in reality I am a Leo with a Leo mercury and he is an Aries with an Aries mercury, so “silently” looked a little more like both of us catching random strays here and there. (“So you’re finally gonna get up and help me for once?”, “You’re terrible at your job”, and “Bro, is it too heavy or are you too weak?” being a few of my personal favorites.) I love my man and his sense of humor, especially when I’m the only person who catches the joke. I hope he hears the language of these laughs: All I want is to laugh with you.
I love his heart and all of the goodness it holds. On days I’m feeling selfish I want to keep it all to myself. But most of the time, I just enjoy seeing the way he presents this to others. He is kind and loving and caring. If someone he loved needed the shoes off his feet, he would hand them over immediately. He’s quick witted and pops off when needed; I know he will always be first to defend me — everything he does, he does in earnest. I believe that kind people are hard to find in a world where most people are just nice. He is one of the rare few. It makes me happy that everyone I know who has interacted with him has pointed this out to me — it surprises them how genuine and authentic someone can be; they feel like they’ve never met someone like that before. He is honest down to his core and that is a sense of pride for me. I know he loves me; there is never any doubt or question about that for me. I told him recently that a quality I value about our relationship that I feel wasn’t present in previous relationships of mine is how open we are with each other. There is never anything we feel we hesitate to tell each other.
He’s a hard working man — no matter how long he showers he can’t get the scent of manual labor off of him. I love it. It makes me feel safe, like how I did when my grandpa would come home after work, take a long shower, and then I would sit with him and watch Gunsmoke while snacking on sunflower seeds. It feels like home. It feels like spring break in South Carolina and how the breeze would feel while reading on the porch swing; of rubbing eucalyptus leaves between my palms; of spanish moss dancing in the wind. It reminds me of long drives through the country and singing gospel songs on Sunday mornings.
Falling in love has never felt so sound.
No one has ever been this gentle with me before. He takes such good care of me. He is always willing to accommodate me and my feelings; even through BPD mood swings, he remains kind, loving, and caring. He doesn’t raise his voice, he never gets rough with me. Although these are bare minimum traits, I unfortunately feel like they are becoming even more rare to find.
I feel like he is helping me to heal the rest of the wounds I couldn’t have done on my own. He makes me feel like I can do anything, and I feel so lucky to be able to do this life with him.
The opposite of a papercut is a kiss on the forehead. And all of the best ones are from him.