My darling little girl,

After years of evidence, I was fully convinced that no person is capable of changing him/herself solely for the benefit of another third party. Even when I myself attempted to change to please someone else, I found myself falling short of that person’s standards and inevitably disappointing everyone involved, despite my best intentions. When I met your father, I was presented with an ultimatum that forced me to look myself dead in the eye and change the path my life was on in order to acquire the healthy, happy relationship we’ve been blessed with today. But even still, I was prone to shortcomings, often losing my footing and drifting into my conditioned habits.

And then I met you.

The list of characteristics I have developed since your conception is far too long to reveal here. From the moment I knew you were coming, I began to actively transform into someone deserving of such a beautiful gift and, through patience and soul-shaking, exuberantly overwhelming love for you and your life, I’ve somehow become as close to a decent person as I’ve ever been in my life. And still, I feel that no matter how much improvement I make to myself, it will never be perfect enough for you.

In the last few months, however, I have found myself sucked back into the vortex of my inherently tyrannical illness that disables my thinking and my ability to function on a physical plane. This is something I have had years of experience dealing with but never to such a staggering degree. Heartbroken and devastated, I have watched as this illness has caused me to fall short of my responsibilities to you. In my darkest moments, your Granny has unflinchingly swooped in and taken you to her home to give me time to recouperate and fight this monster that eats at my consciousness. On these days I stand at my front door weeping in the knowledge that I am wasting these precious early years of yours fighting deeply-rooted demons instead of tending to your every desire as you so deserve.  I’ve sobbed to God, to doctors, to therapists for relief so that I can return to your side and lose myself in your infectious joy and eager acceptance of this beautiful world around you and the incredible gift of your existence within it.

With this extraordinary weight, this relentless pressure, and this seemingly insurmountable guilt constantly growing in my delirium, I am far past my usual breaking point. In the world that existed before you, I would have surrendered to the demons months ago, flinging hope and sobriety to the side and plunging headfirst into whatever demise I could create for myself. (This is the path that I have taken more times than I am comfortable admitting to anyone, especially you.) This bout has been more exhausting, more driving, more painful. This round has seen my mind up the ante, pulling the rug out from my reality, breaking out new strategies to turn my consciousness against me. This round has seen me shut down completely and throw up my hands in the struggle to clutch at hope.

In the midst of my bleary, exhausted reality, however, you come to me more clearly than any other truth I may be feeling. Your unconditional love and constant joy weaken the ties my mind has on my emotion, while your whole-hearted innocence fills my whole body with the hope it so badly needs. Without any effort at all, you make me crawl back up to my feet, as I know beyond any delusion or psychosis that this woman my mind is capable of manifesting is not the mother you deserve. This empty, dysfunctional woman is not someone I want you to become familiar with, to identify as your only option for a mother figure. She is not someone I want you to grow up around or remember years later in your adulthood. She is simply not good enough to be your mother.

This is why, although exhausted and annoyed at the redundancy of my belabored intentions and methods, I continue to struggle against this mental undertow. I continue to sit in stuffy doctor’s offices listening to advice I could have scripted myself, I continue to put my body through the hell of finding the right medicinal cocktail to quell my mind, I continue to take fearless moral inventories of myself on a daily basis, I continue to at least keep going even when I feel that I physically, mentally cannot.

Every night, when I watch you resting in your perfect serenity, I am reminded of how badly I want to be the one that always holds you when you are scared at night and always comforts you when you are heartbroken. I want to be the safe haven for your thoughts and dreams, the refuge for your pain, the foundation for this beautiful life you are already building. I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything else.

You are the hope that delivers me to tomorrow.

For this and countless other things, I will never be able to thank you enough.

Much much love and light,

Castallare