Acceptance and affection are my currencies. I don't do any exchange, it's all at par and it's freaking expensive for you. Worse for me still as I can't put a price on the absolute value. It wanes like the sunbeams across the wooden floor, unpredictable new cats lounging in the warmth left behind.
It's sweet, for sure but difficult too. Like that first time you make a calculated decision to change something because he likes it better and you want to please him. It makes him happy and the thrill you feel down between your shoulder blades when he smiles at you with unchecked delight is the reward for selling yourself out. That's a long race to the bottom and it's a race you should never put yourself in. You're not qualified, you haven't trained, and yet you know in the moment you're going to spend the remainder of your life chasing the high of that thrill like the best drug you never wanted but were given anyway.
Oh, but his face when he smiles.
***
The reason the pills went away wasn't because I was a zombie, even though I was. They would have left me locked in that cage forever. It was safer. It was easier. It was convenient and peaceful and stupid, that Bridget being a yes-man when she's been an obstinate nine-year old for her entire existence, all fifty-some odd years of it now.
They went away for other reasons and I'll never let them do that again.
Even if it means the smile fades like those sunbeams.
It won't.
What if we just wait and see, Lochlan?
It won't. I told you and I mean it.