I think we all come at it in different ways. I brought in a pair of sock monkeys a few weeks ago, one is T, one is me. My monkey is pink and at least 4 times bigger than T's - so yeah, they're to scale! He had told me he had brought his monkey home and was making room for it on his shelf, but we never talked about pink monkey, even last week when I showed him how to MMS me the picture of the pair.

So today I finally got up the nerve to ask him where pink monkey was, if he had given her to his stepdaughter, or to a little girl client? He said it was still in the office, that he was thinking about taking it home and putting it with his other stuffies. I said, "You don't have to do that." He said, "I know I don't have to, I wouldn't do it if I thought I had to." I remember now that's something we used to talk about a lot, feeling forced to do something, neither of us likes it. Anyway, then I started telling him about granite's compassion thread today, and the way that tied in was, I also remembered when my kitten ran away when I was married, I was at my parents' house crying, and my dad said, very angrily, "That's why I never got attached to anything, you just get hurt!" and I told T, I was so stunned, I couldn't stop and process what he was saying - I knew i would have had to redefine my whole life. (Which I guess is what i'm finally doing now.) So I says to T, you don't have to make a place for me; which is what i've been talking about recently, about there not being a place for me at my parents' house, and not even ever at my own apartments. And tonight, I thought, wondering if T gave the pink monkey to the other girls meant, there must have been little girls my parents liked more than me, because they sure weren't showing ME the love, so it must have been going someplace else? Snuff said she wanted to see the movie about the life this other girl lived that my mother had in her mind.

That idea of a little hankster always sounded kinda phony to me? some ideal happy little shirley temple, wtf. but this is my story, and it's real. so this ghost hankster I can relate to, that my parents saw instead of seeing me, and there was no room for ME.