CAN’T SLEEP WITHOUT MY HUG
CAN’T SLEEP WITHOUT MY HUG
(RUBY XXXI)
Niama Leslie Williams
Copyright November 2008
You know, your wisdom is phenomenal. Your response has the clarity of a laser. Thank you.
Love and blessings,
Dr. Ni
--- On Sun, 11/30/08, V wrote:
> Subject: Re: New Poem
> To: drni@blowingupbarriers.com
> Date: Sunday, November 30, 2008, 11:31 AM
>
A man or a woman that is overweight is trying to protect their body. It's a shield. If you are losing weight, you are tearing down the walls. Literally.
> ________________________________
> From: Dr. Niama L. Williams
> Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 2:38:14 AM
> Subject: Re: New Poem
>
> Thank you for your poems, Sister; they are a daily, weekly, every so often reminder of the grace and beauty of G-d (as you call Him!). They always and perennially grace my soul.
>
> Much has happened and I find myself wanting to call a sister and ask if I am enduring/experiencing something odd, unusual.
>
> Life has been filled with stresses lately, but I think you have gathered from recent emails and compositions that I live with a man who loves me truly without bound. Day before yesterday his ex-sister-in-law (his brother is deceased) sent pictures from the performance of a play that he was in.
>
> My Joseph looked his stunningly handsome self, my Joseph really is quite the looker (though he does not believe so), but I, I was horrified by my appearance. I looked at those pictures and saw the five hundred pound woman. Even as I type this my eyes almost well up at the memory.
>
> I had no idea my eating had gotten that out of control. Fat everywhere. Bulging, hanging, terrible. I was devastated. Joseph and I have not been sexual and I looked at those pictures and thought--this is why. I'm disgusting. My image in those photos wrecked my whole day.
>
> On top of that there is a family event to which Joseph wants to drive an incredible distance to take a family member who has no transportation. I was incensed because his family often takes advantage of him this way, but at the same time felt I could say nothing as I am only his friend, not his wife.
>
> I was so depressed I was in bed by 8 p.m. with no dinner, too upset to eat. I just wanted to close the door and lie in the bed until I fell asleep.
>
> Joseph ate something, we had been gone a long while, and soon he was knocking boldly on my bedroom door. I had been calling him, spirit to spirit, but I was so down I couldn't ask to be held.
>
> But he came. Laid down next to me and said, in his jubilant, insistent voice, "I can't go to bed without my hug!" and I burst into tears. Told him all that I was feeling and he held me, this man held me, my body, my face, while I sobbed. Told me that he woke up every morning thanking God for bringing me into his life, that he looked up and thanked God for me because I gave him back the will to live.
>
> I cried some more. He continued to hold me.
>
This is the kind of nurturing a survivor lives for. The kind of nurturing, caring, that we dream about but rarely experience. Soon it didn't matter that he says he wants to wait to see what God will say to him about our relationship, that he doesn't want to move forward without God's okay--to me meaning "he doesn't want me because I'm too fat."
>
> Now, when he held my cheek as I cried and loved me into a smile and the return of my appetite, I knew that what we have is special even though it is not the "complete" relationship I would like.
>
> And then, because God understands what we women need when we have been stretched beyond our ropes, I bent over today to pick something up off the floor and caught him smiling at me, he thought I wasn't looking, this look of pure guilty glee, as I stood up.
>
> Just what I needed.
>
> I don't know what he is waiting for, but I can wait with him, I can wait with him. Thanks be to God.
>
> Love and blessings, poet extraordinaire,
>
> from your friend Dr. Ni
>
> PS: About the feeling odd, unusual: I feel as though I have got an attack of the "too sensitives." Little things bring me to tears; Joseph's cousin said something today and I was mortally wounded, and it was something that years ago I would have brushed off without a second thought. Perhaps it is just too much change too soon and I'm feeling the effects? I did just get out of the hospital on the 19th, now on insulin for my diabetes, plus three other diabetes meds and one each for hypertension and high blood pressure, and have had a challenging houseguest since the 21st. I don't understand crying so easily now when I live with a man who loves me so thoroughly that I've stopped binge eating, a habit of 40 years. I feel fragile, vulnerable, which seems odd when I am being loved, by Joseph, by members of his family, in ways I have not experienced before. Wisdom to share (that question is for all of you reading this, not just Ryfkah)?
>
