Ten Years

Baby Girl,

Ten years ago yesterday, I asked if you needed help for the last time.

Ten years ago today, we cuddled and joked for the last time. 

Ten years ago tomorrow was the end of your life and the beginning of a nightmare.

I continue to be knocked down by your absence, to figure out how to get up and carry on. I would give anything to hold you again, to help you again, to have tomorrow never have happened. 

3,651 days. It's a lot of days to go without a person that you love. It's long enough to figure out how to get through every day, how to acclimate to a new life that is just a little less. It's never going to be long enough to move on.

In the past ten years I've heard parents talk about how hard it is to continue to support their children who have substance abuse disorders. I've heard young people talk about their parents cutting them off or removing their support. I know that I am not part of those families and I don't see the intimate details of their struggles. I know that it is reasonable to reach a limit. I understand that.

I want to be gracious and understanding to those parents. But all I can think is that I wonder if I could change their minds if I could explain to them what it is like to have lost that choice - too late, revoked, they're dead. There are no take backs and just like I would have wished for you to learn from my mistakes I wish I could transmit to them the lessons that I have learned from your death. The uncontrollable, incapacitating grief and the rest of my life spent trying to overcome it. The way it sneaks up on me, the way it keeps all of my emotions floating just below the surface.  The way I feel permanantly and perpetually broken. I cannot help but think how much I would give to be in a position to continue to help you with your monsters. I didn't know it at the time, but it's what I signed up for when I had you.

I miss you so much. I yearn to share things with you. To go on a walk, to giggle together, to fight. I want to show you this new place that we live in that you will never experience. I want you to see your siblings and for them to know you and everything that was so special about you. I would give everything for anything.

I don't know what triggered the choices you made that stole you from me. I've spent so much time in the last ten years trying to figure it out, analyzing it. Sometimes I thought I understood. Its not a mystery I can solve, but I think that adds to the guilt because I am so sure that I missed things that could have saved you.

I will spend the rest of my life mourning you. Some days it's all that I can do to fight the feelings that this creates. Some days every thought of you brings a smile to my face.

I am so grateful that your spirit chose mine. That I got my introduction to motherhood with your wonderful life. For every decision I made as a naive teenager who believed that all I needed was the love that I had for you from the moment I knew you existed.

I'm sorry for the moments that I failed you. For the things I missed because I was too busy or too blind. For losing my temper when I should have held you and focused on your needs. For not listening to my fears, yesterday, ten years ago.

I'm sorry that you are not here to hug and that I couldn't stop your absence.

With everything I am sorry for, I will never be sorry for you, or for every moment that I was allowed to be your mother. 

I love you, Baby Girl. Always.