Dear Afflicted

Open Letter to the Afflicted:

I don't know you, but I know your mothers, because I stand among them.

We mothers share tears, tattered hope, and broken dreams.

Through all that you're going through,

Through all that we've been through,

Our love is there, frayed, tattered, flying in the wind like a damaged battle flag in war.

You are our child, we birthed you from our wombs, or claimed you as our own, took you into our hearts, our lives, our worlds.

We have memories of happier times,

When you were happier, when we were happier, when the world was less complex,

When the burden of your affliction had not yet saddled you.

You stumble under the weight of your affliction,

We do, too. You are not alone -- and yet you are alone and so are we.

We are all alone in a sea of aloneness, each person trapped on their own island of misery but seeing others across the way.

We are too weary to wave or even nod.

We are toiling under the brokenness that has claimed us all.

Your days consist of getting through one more day, finding your next fix.

Our days consist of trying to fix you so that you no longer seek the fix that drowns you, robs you of your dreams, steals your life, poisons the love of all around you.

When we collapse and withdraw, it is not because we stopped loving you. It it is because the demon that rides you has crushed our hopes and bled our soul and made us believe we are hopelessly robbed of you forever. That the demon will hold you now in its clutches without mercy for as long as it can, to the grave if it can. We dare not hope to see ever again, any semblance of normalcy for you or us.

But to every afflicted child out there, no matter your age, you were not only once loved, you are STILL loved. And in the depths of every heart that loves you, it is ever hoped that one day soon, you will get to dance fully and joyfully in the sunshine of your release from the chains of the demon that laid claim to you.