The bit about the baker made me I could just imagine you going up to him and declaring you love his smile!

Yes, mine does. Or did. I did want her to. It made me think wft at first, why I wanted it, and I had some agonized conversations, and then I realised I wanted her to be my sister (at that point, anyway) and it felt really peaceful and right. It gave me confidence. I wrapped it round me like a layer of light going out into the world.

She knew for ages about that kind of love I had, too. I had been saying it in written form, but not verbal. And then on New Year's Eve, we were in different countries and talking on the phone, and she was being extremely attuned and gentle, and kept saying how this could be a good time of year for us to tell each other important things. I ignored her and then later she sent me a lovely message telling me lovely things that left me in no doubt that she loved me. Then when I got back to London, I finally had to say it - that I felt love for her, and felt so loved in return, and was it real in interpreting her care as love or was I going crazy? And she said it was real, and maybe we needed to take it off the page, and say it aloud. And we said it

It calmed something in me, and affirmed my ability to recognize love.

Our best days might be far behind us in my therapy now, but her love was the most reparative thing I have experienced in my lifetime. The only thing that has come close to the love I gave and got from my late mother.

I don't know. I feel like she taught me to love myself again, after I got very lost and wandered into some dark spaces, simply by loving me.

ETA: For clarity, I am talking about my T and not my local baker..