Hi there. I cannot talk to you tonight. You are half a country away, by my own choice, and so I know I'll have to settle with writing down my heart for you to read on your own time later.
Josie, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. About you, and me, and Daddy, and how this all began. From the way it looks now, there were no good intentions, there was no sacrifice, and there has been nothing but selfishness that bred this bitterness that is left of a beautiful dream that lived in me, for you. But it existed, baby, and I hope that no matter what happens in the next days and months and years of your precious life that you will have been told the truth about our story.
I don't know how to ensure that, baby, but to keep you within arm's reach. It has come to the point where we must choose to leave you or to take you away from the other, not forever, but maybe something like it. My first instinct, I will admit, was to let you remain in your father's care because, despite the slow drawl of his love for you, he has shown that you hold his heart, and I know you have given him yours even at 3. You love your Daddy, and that is something I will not give you a chance at forgetting. My fear, though, baby, is that if I walk away, you will not know of my love and will let go of my heart, and because it is yours, it would go on floating into a dark, lonely, childless sadness forever. I cannot not have you. Please remember the time when it was only you and I, because I do, and I regret nothing more than that I risked losing the one thing that had ever meant more to me than anything else. In my womb, you were of me, and I was of you. It was a bond that had to be broken for you to grow, but the bond that had formed during your life was my responsibility, and I let it fall from my fingers. I stepped away so that he would take steps toward you. And it worked. And now, all there is, is the present, and it looks to the world as if I have not enough love to give to my blood, my flesh, my child. But, baby, please know that I only wanted him to love you too. His love was never mine, but I knew that if I gave him no choice, he would have to love you, because you were perfect. And it didn't take long before he was all yours, baby, because that's how lovely you are. But don't forget, please don't forget, that while I walked away, I never left you. I was always just a few steps away, watching out to make sure you were loved like you should be. And you were. There has been little fault in your father's manner of care. His actions are not the reason I must make the decision that I have decided to make. I've forgiven all sins, I can see his love for his daughter, but there's something deeper that matters more that I haven't let myself acknowledge until now.
For at least 2 years now, I have been told by nearly everyone around me that I am incapable of love. They told me that I was afraid to love you, because you meant more to me than the world and I knew it and to love you would have meant the possibility of heartbreak and I was too scared for that, too broken to risk it. I believed them, baby. And I let myself believe that I was too broken to love something that mattered so much. And for that reason, I almost walked away from you for good. But then I remembered one thing: Whenever I am with you, and I walk out of the room or onto the porch, you would cry or get worried and yell for me. "MOMMY?!?!!" you'd say and begin to crumble, but I would always peek back in and I would tell you, "Baby, listen, Mommy will NEVER leave you. I promise. Do you trust me?" And you would calm down and nod your head reluctantly. And now, when it's hardest of all and when walking away means leaving you behind for most of your beautiful life, I cannot, and I won't. You are my world. And I may have forgotten or believed in the lies I was being fed while I was weak, but I am stronger now and I know that, even if the only way to be strong is to leave your Daddy and his allies behind, I will do whatever it takes to find my ability to love again, the ability they took away from me when they made me believe I was nothing. But I am not nothing. If I am hardly anything else, I am your mother, your mommy-I am the one who knew you were there before the doctors, before our families, before your Daddy, before the test had even told me, I felt you deep inside me somewhere and I knew my world would be better even if it was different and scary. I'm the one who fought for you when no one else would consider keeping you, the one who refused to even spend one second considering giving you away because I knew I could not live without you. I am the one who left behind my life and my known world so that you might have a present father, the one who refused sugar and stress and coffee, 3 of the things I have been most unable to avoid in my life, so that you would have the best shot at health possible while you were depending on my body to support your growth in the womb. I am the one who pushed you out in a record-breaking time of 23 minutes, the one who cried for weeks while I waited for my busted body to heal from the miracle of life it had supported and birthed. I'm the one who slept rarely so that I could stare often at the most amazing, tiny little, most fragile and fascinating creature I had ever seen while you took from my body so gently, yet desperately, as if there was nothing else you could ever want or need but to be attached to me forever. I was the one who read to you, taught you that orange juice, something you asked for much too often, was "jus d'orange" in French and made you say it till you got it right. I'm the one who read entire books about baby care so that I wouldn't unknowingly harm you and researched websites besides so that you could have the best potential shot. I filled out baby books, filled up pictures, spent hours planning extravagent birthdays that others tried to convince me you wouldn't remember, but I told them it didn't matter, that your lack of memory didn't make you deserve the best any less. I planned your outfits and squeezed our budget so that you'd have what you needed and be called "the most stylish baby" by everyone who saw you, envied by even college students. I was the one who deliberated over your preschool and hand-picked the best there was to offer, made your snacks and found you a lunch box I knew you'd love. You know what else I did? I spent too long overthinking and over searching for the perfect name, and I only rested when I found one that would be as unique and as beautiful and as meaningful as I always knew you be, and you are, my princess, you are everything that could ever be anything close to "God's grace". You are the closest I have ever come to a hug from a heavenly Father, the closest I have come to the hands and heart of God.
There have been regrets. I regret that my attempt at elephant ears for your 2nd birthday party was a miserable one, like much of the rest of the food that year. I regret that I was too confident in you and too in awe of you when you first began to walk that I let you stumble off the porch steps. I regret that I trusted your smart little butt too much while I was watching dishes and didn't hear you wander outside to go exploring with the puppy everyone was pissed at me for getting, as he might cause harm to you. I regret that I have yet to paint your room, and that I've been hateful to your father, a true love of your life, because I want to protect what you love and I haven't always done my best at it. I regret, most, that I let the miscalculated judgements of those around me to infiltrate my feelings for you and to disarm me at being the mother you've always needed and deserved. But I will not go on regretting it, Josie, because I have healed a bit by now, and my heart has been mended enough to remember that the very thing it has loved most since that very first day I felt a little funny and knew in my soul that I was no longer one, but one plus another better, more beautiful and more fragile other, was, by the grace of God, my own, my heart, my love, my very breath, my daughter....you. And I know that my heart could not take another blow, that my heart needs you in it and near it in order to keep on beating. And so, I will do what I have always promised you I would do, and that is to never, ever leave you, even if it means leaving behind for a time some of the things that you love, so that you will have even more things to love, so that you will know how to love, because loving, baby, is the only thing worth living for. I hope that you will forever keep on loving me, as I will always and forever love you, my tiny baby sweet precious princess child, my heart my hope my faith my love..my life.
I miss you so much, beautiful, and I love you even more.
Sweet dreams, sweetie pie.
-Your Mommy
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