Social Norms Confuse Me — Annie Hurley

You see, it’s that I never learned how to love quite right-

My mother wants to hold me at night, like real mothers do. Like good mothers do, yes? But I do not know how to be held like this, her seemingly foreign arms bracketing me in ways that I do not understand. I never learned, never learned how to hold things, how to hold others right.

(it is not that I do not love you, it is not that I do not love you, I do, I do, I do.)

Eyes are foreign to me as well - I never learned how to hold them in the palms of my hand, how to stare through them like glass, always too slippery, too uncertain of a thing for me to keep, always too fragile of a thing for me not to break. I do not look, do not dare meet steely pupils, lest I be pinned in an embrace of its own, an ocular trap of staring, staring, eyes pinning me so tightly that I forget how to breathe. I (do not look at me. do not look at me. you will not like what you see. I will not look back.) never learned how to love quite rightNot in the way that real people love, with big hearts and loud lips, with hands and eyes and hips, soft touches and whispered phrases. Am I too slow? Too fake? Do I even exist at all? I do not do things like real people, I never learned how to be real either. I do not understand this strange dance that they do, I do not understand but I am trying, I am trying, I am trying to love you, trying love everyone around me in a way that makes sense.

(I do not know how to hold you right, I do not know how to look at you right. never have the right words to say, never know what it is that you want to hear.)

I never learned how to love quite rightI speak a language all on its own. I speak in a foreign tongue of love, (nobody understands it but me.)