Lungs.

We sit in the car drinking tea from a flask because everything is closed and the rain is pelting down outside as we talk about how difficult it is to accept that sometimes the people who brought us into the world are not capable of loving us in a way that can ever reach us. Instead they break our hearts. And perhaps we break theirs too. Instead they love us in a way so full of conditions that it has us wondering whether we are worthy of ever truly being loved at all, by anyone because we are either never good enough. Or it has been perceived that we do not need loving. We do not need people. We are strong enough alone. As if strength replaces the need for love? For tenderness. To be seen as someone who doesn’t need loving as though it were a compliment to you for raising yourself to not need anyone. 

As if to say “well done you, I don’t need to waste my time mothering you anymore”