... is solely mine to be known and to be reckoned with

The isolation... that's what compounds it all for me. Even when I'm surrounded by people (often who know me and love me well), I feel alone and unknown. I feel like the deep(er) pain in my heart is solely mine to know and to be reckoned with.

It's a voice trapped inside a boy that my heart covets. It's an inability to free what is trapped and longs to be free. It is my captivation when I see the heart behind those blue eyes and the joy dancing at the surface. It's wanting you to know and be known. It's the inexplicable pain of feeling like the all of you I see is lost in the eyes/perception of others (a sight I have been graced with because I've had the benefit of years watching you, being changed by you). It's the fear of knowing this (awful/wonderful) world and wondering how I can prepare you for it when I can't communicate with you. It's the insane joy I feel when you try to show me yourself, through your creativity, or an attempted word, or a wonderfully smothering embrace, or when you look at me with that smile and just dare me not to feel your delight and revel in it. It's the hope deferred, time and again. It's the hope given in the most unexpected places. It's so desperately wanting you to see all that I see in you. It's yearning for you to know as surely as I know that you are the incredible, the beautiful, the complex, the purposefully created. It's wondering if I am sufficient for the task ahead - of loving you as fully as you deserve to be loved, of teaching you all that you need to prosper, of finding the strength to give to you when you need it most from me... of not failing you where you need me most.

Fear. Hope. Pain. Worry. Wonder. Exasperation. Longing. Doubt. Faith. Ultimately, it is faith. Faith in what (WHOM) I know to be true, right, good and then trusting that even though I so often feel alone in this, (in mothering you, beloved and marvelous human), I am not. The road ahead is not yet known, but the journey is ours to take.