She powders her face and hides her eyes and shuts red lips over white teeth smiles. She bites her tongue and paints her nails and turns her gaze on no one. Only in mystery can she ever be beautiful - she knows this, thus she strives for it. 
Only concealed and encrypted, her emotions like expressions behind a veil, only then, will they love her.
They will love her, because they will not know who she is.

They will imagine in her, those traits that will intrigue them, painting her empty canvas and filling her empty form, with what "they want" to see, what they want to place, what they want to know.
Who she is, is not worth seeing, less worth having, but while veiled and indecipherable, who they make her.......will be perfect.

~ naughts xox

Nursing care comes in many forms.  Sometimes it is the ability to make someone feel physically comfortable by various means.  Other times it is the ability to improve the body's ability to achieve or maintain health.  But often it is an uncanny yet well honed knack to see beyond the obvious and address, in some way, the deeper needs of the human soul. 

i am not terribly approachable.  i know this about myself.  i accept ... even embrace ... this aspect of me.  Most of the time.  Every now and then, there is a breach, a chink in the armor, and all of those things from which i so carefully isolate myself come rushing in.

Oh, God ... the anguish when that happens.  i've mentioned, i believe, that i do not like pain.  Any pain.  i do not like the vulnerability, the stripped feeling that invades and will not let go easily.  Why else would i shield myself so carefully?

i just want to scream and pound my fists and bury my face in my pillows and sob until my throat is sore, my face is raw, and my head is pounding with the outpouring of emotion.  These feelings ... they swoop and they dive at me, and there i stand, desperately trying not to flinch.  If i do, the dam will burst and there is no holding back the spilled darkness.  Instead, it will spread, sanguine, and overtake me, swallow me whole, then spit me back, trembling and unprotected.

Why could i not see it coming?  Like a disease that mutates and becomes immune to a developed cure, there is no way to keep myself always safe, always buffeted and cocooned.  So i'll creep to my bed and try to sleep.  i'll allow the tears to come, to slip silently down my cheeks to wet my pillow as i stare into the gloom.  And, maybe, if i am very, very still, my eyes will close and my armor will repair itself in the night.

Perhaps i will wake protected once more.