This morning I'm thinking about something I realized after I tried summarizing my sitch for my first post on Saturday: I've been thinking of my last conversation with H pretty negatively--seeing it as confirmation that he's not in a place to notice the changes I've made yet. But in saying he's hurt that I only started to change once he threatened to leave and that he's afraid if he did give the R a chance, things would go back to the way they were, I see that in one compartment of his brain, he does see that I've changed.
I think I also continue to exist in yet another compartment of his brain: a few months ago, I started leaving him short notes on the kitchen table once or twice a week since he was almost always gone when I got home from one job and before I headed to another--they were mostly businesslike--one of our cats needs meds twice a day, and I'd let him know whether or not I'd had a chance to do that, or whether or not they'd been fed. But I also tried to throw in jokes the way I'd normally do, and sometimes I would let him know I'd made cookies or whatever, and that he was welcome to take some. (Sometimes he would and sometimes he wouldn't.) Once I expressed sympathy after he'd told me, casually, that a dear family friend of his had died suddenly.
Does he throw these little notes away after he reads them, in the trash can that sits a few feet away? No. He takes them back to his room, and he's saved every one of them.
