The shape of thoughts

Isn't it funny that sometimes another person can give you an expression of yourself better than anything you can manage? You can listen to a song or hear a poem and think - That's me! That's what I feel and think.

It has a kind of hurting quality, to hear your insides expressed by somebody else, to feel suddenly that you're not alone in feeling that, but also that you're not unique; that perhaps nothing you can do will ever be as entirely new and special and 'you' as it feels in your heart when you do it.

I'm lucky that I have a husband and friends who know me so completely. People with whom I can be entirely honest in a way I don't think I suspected was possible and yet I sometimes still find myself keeping things back. Not the big things, things like decisions or news, but the tiny little fragments of thoughts like how beautiful it looks when the sun shines through a jar of jam and the way the whole thing glows as if it holds some magic. Or when you see a child learning something and you get a sudden glimpse of all their possibilities and it takes your breath away.

Occasionally I tell Adam one of these thoughts and he never turns away from them, but sometimes I feel as if he's looking at life from the bottom of a box - surrounded by high walls that block out the view in every direction. I feel so sorry for him. I love when we share a moment like looking at a sunset together and, briefly, it seems as though I've created a window in one of his walls.

I was ten minutes later leaving for work yesterday because I was fussing Bramble and he was enjoying it so much he left trails of dribble on his blanket. I couldn't bear to leave when he was in such an ecstasy of squirming and I loved the way his thick, soft fur scrunched under my fingers and the intense heat of his skin where he had been shaved for his operations. Most of all I loved the way he looked at me like he was focusing all of his attention on me and there was nobody else in the world. Somehow it seemed even more special because it was from a cat and so I sat on the landing and fussed him until I really really *had* to go.