At times I like to have your hand on my back as I sleep, like she needs ours.

It is reassuring…a reminder of your presence but also mine.

Like tucking the covers around me, to make a cocoon-which remind me of where I begin and end. It brings a certainty to the blurriness.

A clarity I need, to remind me that I am here, present in this space.

Otherwise the panic eats at my edges, making me rethink, analyse, doubt, condemn myself in to a smaller and smaller space.

But your hand reminds me that I am here, I am occupying this space-it isn’t being taken from me.

The facts, the reality, the truth calms my anxieties, quiets the voices.

I always believed in the importance of independence…to be able to do it yourself, and yet this relationship has knitted us together in dependence. This is not to say I still don’t get down to see independent women tunes, and also should challenge myself to do more! But I find myself needing you a lot, I wonder do you need me too? And we are told that ‘needing’ is a sign of weakness, an ugly, desperate trait…but yet aren’t we born that way? Our daughter needs us and we don’t punish her for that (though it can feel like punishment to us in the middle of the night)

Maybe we never grow out of this interdependence malarkey…maybe we never should, its just life isolates us through situations beyond our control?

Who knows…but tonight I am grateful for your hand on my back.

(I am well aware he probably takes his hand off my back straight after I fall asleep, a bit like the hug and roll from Friends)