Fighting with Alice

Often I mirror L's affect as a way to connect with her. For example, if she has a furrowed brow, I'll furrow my eyebrows so she might see her self in me. It's playful, and sometimes it's the only way I know how to engage.

A few weekends ago, she was angry and tense, and she hit me. For a moment I met her where she was and grabbed her wrists. She is so strong, and we struggled physically for about 2.5 seconds.

That was all I needed to have a real visceral, physical memory of fighting with Alice. Between the ages of 3 and 25(!), I would try to stop her from hitting, scratching or pinching me, while trying to hit, scratch and pinch her. And she would be doing exactly the same relative to me.

As an adult now in this moment with L, I had the experience of the intimate connection it takes to fight physically with someone. You need to be attuned with them, second by second, and it's a f`cked-up way of bonding, actually.

I snapped out of it and saw myself with L and not with Alice. I got so sad thinking that the way Alice and I knew to connect was through violence. I miss feeling that connection with her, even through pain.

Tomorrow marks exactly 3 and a half years since she died. My life continues; my absence from this blog suggests that I've gone on. Have I? The grief isn't as raw as it once was; it's only intermittently hard to exist without her.