this is my hell.

My beautiful Ryder,

I don't write you nearly as often as I want to. Lately I've been shutting down emotionally about losing you, for fear that your parents are closing the adoption... but that's no excuse.

For months after I first moved to California, I felt deserted. In some way I think I relished in this emotion, because it made me feel closer to how adoptees feel. We share that. A sense of deserting. Except I made the mistake of deserting myself.

By losing you, I was supposed to give up all the parts of motherhood. I'm told I no longer "have" a son, so I am therefore no longer a "mother" to a boy. I was supposed to refocus. To buckle down and achieve all the things I was meant to, but no one told me those dreams would become insignificant to the dreams of motherhood.

So after losing you, I then lost my drive. I lost my foundation, my family, my trust in men. I lost all confidence and belief in myself. I then lost my sense of who I was: who I had been, and who I was to become. If fate makes me a mother, and yet I can not BE a mother because I have no child to care for, then would I ever get to be one? How could the beautiful Universe ever allow me the opportunity to be a mother again? I shoved that fate back in Destiny's face. And her punishment for me is this.

This.
This is my hell.

All thoughts, beliefs, wants, dreams, yearnings, intuitions, fears, and love boil within me as a brew of maternity.

I crave your touch—the affection of my child—and worry for your safety and health.

I dream—both night and day—of your smile, your laughter and favorites and interests.

I hear your distant voice, somehow carrying on the wind of the night's sky to me. I hear you tell me that you're confused and just "want to be like everyone else" without the complexities of parents, law, and distance. (Of course, you won't be able to verbalize this for sometime, but I still hear you explain it as I sleep.)

My hell is that I can't say back that I'm sorry and want you right back in my arms like you used to be. I can't watch your curiosity grow and revel in your young intellect.

I know you fall and skin your knees but I can't be there to wipe the dirt off and kiss your tear-streaked cheeks. I am merely a young girl in legal chains that have stricken me from reaching out to you too much, for fear of being locked even further out by your parents.

This is my hell.

This hole in my body that you used to fill has become a cell block. I am imprisoned to the confines of maternity and yet separated by bars of fire-forged fear from you. Furthermore I am supposed to be grateful for my imprisonment. My only, rare visitors expect to see nothing but smiles and tears of joy for my few moments with you, as if I had done something wrong that would necessitate such a loss, and thus should feel lucky mine wasn't permanent.

This is hell.

I am not the lucky one. Your new 'parents,' and big 'sister' are the fortunate ones. They are constantly blessed by your radiance. You smile upon them, and call them by the most sacred of names: mommy and daddy. The only thing that gets me through these dark days in my cold cell are the warming dreams of the possibility that you may one day remember that you are my son, and I may be a mother to you again.

My love, I want you to know that as much as this all hurts, it is not you who made my life such an empty, sad place: it was I.

Eternally,
Your Mama Anne