My Dearest Daughter

My dearest Annie,

As I hold you in my arms there are tears in my eyes and a prayer in my heart. I am imagining what you will be like when you are my age and I am praying that you will not be like me. My sweet angel, you are so very precious to me. Don't let anyone ever tell you differently. I cannot keep from running my hand through your soft curly hair and snuggling you close to breathe you in. You are so innocent and I am so jaded. You have no secrets while I have many that I am too ashamed to speak of. I am not foolish enough to pray for your innocence to be never-ending, but please, whatever hurts you may encounter do not let yourself react like I did and become like me.
While you are safe in my arms I am fighting a desperate battle for my health, my sanity, my life. I am trying to stop myself from self-destructing, from slowly committing suicide. And you know what? You are my inspiration. I tell myself that I want to come to you and hold you without also holding the heavy guilt of failure, of another day wasted ~ another backwards step on this road to “healing”. And so I continue to fight for all that you represent; for in you I see the future that I can have if only I will choose life.

As I hold you, sleep is beginning to overtake you. Your eyelids grow heavy and stay closed before popping open for one last look at the world as you see it. The warmth of your body is comforting to me. I smile a painful smile at the irony of it all for sleep has overtaken you like depression has overtaken me. Before you even existed as a dream, I was crying out, screaming for release from a mindless existence, but no one heard me. And after a while I succumbed to maddening sadness and my past crept into my present and carried me away. I was silenced by the obsession, the addiction of it all, and I became one more statistic in a growing set of numbers.

As I watch you sleeping, I am fighting to wake up, to shed this stupor of death. My eyes are like yours, sometimes popping wide open for a moment of epiphany, but more often than not staying closed to a world that is too critical, too demanding, too harsh, too fearful, and too vast all at once. Maybe soon, or maybe not for a long time, but eventually, I promise you, I will start screaming again, I will start fighting again.

And when the time comes for me to scream and fight, it is you, my beautiful angelic daughter, who I will be screaming and fighting for.

I LOVE YOU,
Mommy