#02.14.26

sleeping in ruins

Mom,

I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to sit down and write this, because you deserve words that match what you’ve given me. Maybe part of me always worried I’d say it wrong, or that I’d make it too heavy, or that if I really opened my mouth and told the truth, I’d crack open something I’ve spent my whole life holding together. But I think I’m finally old enough to understand that loving someone doesn’t mean keeping everything quiet. Sometimes it means saying it out loud, even if your voice shakes.

I remember more than I ever admitted. I remember the way I could read the whole night in the sound of the front door. I remember learning how to breathe shallow when the air felt unsafe. I remember cleaning up messes I didn’t make, and trying to shrink myself down into someone easy, someone who wouldn’t add to the weight you already carried. I remember watching you come home exhausted—so tired it looked like your bones were made of sand—and still finding a way to ask me how my day was. Like my life mattered, like I mattered, even when yours was being pulled apart in a hundred directions.

You were the only steady thing in a house that never stayed steady for long. You were the one who kept the lights on, the meals coming, the bills paid, the world turning. You were the one who did it all while still trying to protect my heart from things you never should’ve had to face alone. And I know you thought I didn’t see it. I know you tried to keep your tears quiet, tried to make your fear invisible. But I saw it anyway. I saw the nights you broke when you thought I was asleep. I heard the arguments. I heard the promises that didn’t mean anything in the morning. And even then, you still got up and kept going.

I need you to know something I’ve never said clearly enough: you didn’t just raise me. You saved me. You gave me a blueprint for what strength actually looks like. Not the loud kind. Not the kind that demands attention. The kind that keeps showing up. The kind that keeps loving. The kind that keeps a child warm and fed and cared for even when the world is cruel and unfair and relentless. When I think about the person I’m trying to become, the version of me that feels safe instead of braced for impact, it’s because of you.

There are parts of me that are still shaped by that house. I can feel it in how I watch people’s moods like weather, how I instinctively look for exits, how I get protective so fast it’s almost automatic. Sometimes I still catch myself trying to be “easy,” trying not to need too much, trying to earn my place by being quiet. I’m working on it. I’m trying to unlearn the idea that love is something you survive instead of something you rest in. And I think that’s the most important thing you gave me—because even in the worst of it, you taught me that love can be real. You were proof.

I also want you to know this: none of what happened was your fault. I know you probably carry guilt you don’t deserve. I know you probably replay moments in your head and wonder if you could’ve done more, or done it differently. But you did more than enough. You did what you could with what you had, and you did it while being exhausted, scared, and alone in ways most people will never understand. You were never the reason things were hard. You were the reason I made it through them.

I don’t say this to reopen old wounds. I say it because I’m not a kid anymore, and I don’t want to keep living like the truth is something we have to tiptoe around. The truth is you were my home. You were the safest place I had. And even now, even with all the scars and the memories and the parts of me that still flinch at sudden noises, you’re still the person I trust most in the world.

Thank you for every meal you made when you barely had energy to stand. Thank you for every time you chose softness when life tried to harden you. Thank you for every time you loved me out loud, even when you were running on empty. Thank you for being my mother in every way that mattered, and for being the kind of person I can look at and say, That’s what strength is.

I love you. I always have. I always will. And I’m going to keep building a future that feels safe—not just for me, but for you too, in whatever ways I can. You deserve peace. You deserve rest. You deserve a life that doesn’t feel like endurance.

You gave me everything.