Letter to Self: The Kiss I Asked For

Dear self,

I want to tell you about a dream.

I saw my mother. I asked her to kiss me on the forehead. She refused.

Earlier that same night, I had been talking with a friend about our childhoods , how tough they could be, how desperate we were, as children, simply for touch. A hug. A kiss. The ordinary things that tell a child they are safe and wanted. We agreed that our parents were imperfect, that they tried hard in their own way, but they didn't know how to give us what we needed. And we agreed on something else too: that the pattern has to be broken. That we are the ones who get to break it.

Then I fell asleep, and my own mind gave me the exact test of everything we had just spoken about. My mother — the one I lost so young , appeared, and I asked her for the smallest, most human thing. A kiss on the forehead. And even there, even in a dream where anything was possible, she said no.

I don't fully understand why the dream gave me that answer instead of the one I wanted. Maybe it wasn't really about her at all. Maybe my own mind was showing me the shape of an old ache, right after I had spent the night naming it out loud — as if to ask me: do you understand yet how deep this goes? Naming the pattern is not the same as healing it.

I don't need to resolve what her refusal meant. I don't need to turn it into a clean lesson. Some things are allowed to just hurt, exactly as they are, without being fixed into a moral.

What I do know is this: I already said the truer thing, earlier that same night, awake and with a friend who understood — that the people who raised me were doing their best with what they had, and that not receiving what I needed from them does not mean I am undeserving of it. It means the giving of it now, to myself and to the people I love, is mine to carry forward.

The pattern must be broken. I already know that. Maybe the dream wasn't contradicting it — maybe it was just reminding me how much still aches underneath the knowing.