the truth will set me and her free

i'm 3
and someone i love very much just left me.
and i don't feel their love anymore.
and it's left this gaping hole in my heart but i don't know how to do anything else other than cry all the time.
i don't if or when this person will be back.
it hurts, it hurts so much i want to rip at my chest to stop stop my pain.
why did they leave? why dont they love me anymore?

why can't i go with her? why is she leaving us here. come back mommy, you can't leave us, you're our mommy and she's not and you're hurting me and stop it, stop it, stopitstopitstopit

***

i don't know how to buffer this pain 40 years later as it crashes into me tonight.
but i'm thankful my body is remembering and letting go.
i don't know what to say to my 3yr old self...i know why my mother put us into foster care, and her reasons were noble and self-sacrificing, because it hurt her too...but how to comfort this sobbing self.
remind her that she came back and that she never left us again. and that that wicked witch who was supposed to love us can't hurt me or my sister again, and when i find those fucking pictures of my 'foster family', i'm going to burn them to nothing and hope that my memories burn too.

***

in the thick of my post-partum depression, i seriously contemplated foster care for my own infant daughter. of course that would never have happened, my family let alone my partner would have stepped in and pursued legal action. but still, it soothed me in my dark hell, knowing that she would be better off without me, knowing that some other family, some other mother could love her like she was supposed to be, this blue-eyed, dimpled cherub. knowing that the burden (because that's what it felt like through the thick haze) of being this all-knowing, always-loving, ever-patient mommy could be passed over to someone else and i could disappear into self-loathing for failing myself and her.

***

i'm so fucking grateful that i'm not ashamed to cry.
not ashamed that i can relive the thoughts i had during my depression knowing that they weren't mine to control (if you've never been depressed this sounds like a cop-out, but it is what it is).
not ashamed of the fucking hell i lived through for a year so that my mother could gather herself and be the mother she knew she could be.
not ashamed to write about this...letting the 8inch steel wall open on my wounds so that it doesn't eventually kill me.