I wonder…

I wonder if those who have never lost a child to the system, or to an alienator, know that you don’t simply lose your baby in one moment. I wonder if they know that good parents that have never done anything wrong can lose their child, if the opposing parent has enough money and anger.

I wonder what they think of me. I wonder if they think I am the worst mother in the world because I am never with my child. I wonder if they know that I am in a perpetual state of sadness. I wonder if they know that just saying her name can reduce me to tears. That mentioning something she said once can open the floodgates that I still don’t know how to shut after 4 years.

I wonder if they know that you didn’t just wake up one day and accept they’re gone for good. You didn’t hug them one minute and then live your life divided by that instant, all while having it together and not grieving the loss that is, in some ways, more powerful and protruding than any death. Death is finality and closure, going home to be with Jesus, safety and an end to suffering.

Alienation and parental kidnapping is trying to go through the motions without closure, without a light at the end of the tunnel, without safety or an end to suffering. This is unending and undeserved purgatory.

You lose that child every day again and again. You lose them in big ways and then in trickling, drawn out, torturous ways. You lose them Monday through Sundays, then Christmases and their birthdays. You lose them at trick or treating, egg hunts or watching the way their eyes light up at 4th of July fireworks. You lose them again through personal changes as they grow and separate from who they were the last time you saw them and you find yourself replacing, “___ loves unicorns” with, “___ USED to love unicorns”, but having no idea what she loves now or what to say about them that isn’t past tense.

There comes a day when you lose them by the clothes they wore because you know that, even if they come back, nothing will ever fit again. Their drawers or closets look one of two ways – filled to the brim with new clothes that have never been worn, tags flapping in the closet and shoe boxes stacking the floor. Or nearly empty because you couldn’t bare staring at the outgrown and unworn things anymore, so you’ve donated them in hopes to help another child and you could no longer afford to buy clothes for a child you don’t have, after you’ve endured years of court costs and have brought yourself close to losing everything.

There’s a day when their snacks go bad in the cupboards and you have to throw them out, knowing you won’t be replacing them. There’s a day when you’re going through your phone and you realize that there hasn’t been a new photo of them in far longer than you can admit, without it knocking the breath from your lungs. There’s a day where someone makes a comment about you never posting photos of them on Facebook anymore and you don’t reply because that would mean reliving what happened to your family to a stranger.

There’s a day when school starts and you weren’t there. You don’t have any First Day Of School photos because you were denied that beautiful moment. And another when report cards come out and you don’t know how they did or if they are struggling through life as much as you are. You wonder if they got school photos and what they looked like, the outfit, the hair and the gaps in that smile, if there was a smile.

There’s a day where the beloved pets in your home no longer search for that child. They stop looking for them out the window or waiting for their cuddles at bedtime. They stop sniffing for the smell of their beloved human and move on with life, avoiding their room entirely or sometimes destroying it. Every child that comes through your home gets sniffed and scoured, in case she might be Your Child that used to brush your fur and give you treats.

There’s a day when you have to sort through things – old toys, baby head bands, lotion that has never been opened, that old toothbrush that is still living in the bathroom, the piles of unopened presents that you’ve been denied the ability to give to them and the smiles and joy that would have gone with those moments. You bargain with yourself for years about keeping things “just in case they come home”.

Throwing stuff away feels like The Ultimate Betrayal. You think about how, if they came home tomorrow, they would be DEVASTATED that all of their belongings are gone. You obsess over the hurt and pain they might feel. You donate things and each time involves crying from the depths of your soul that you didn’t even know existed. You will never get rid of everything, even when you know they are never coming back.

You see a memorial of them each day when you see their bedroom. A shrine of what was and what will never be. You close the door when you can’t bear it and you skip cleaning in there often, because each memory floods over you like a wave upon entry and drowns you. There’s a day when they lose teeth and get haircuts and hit milestones you’ll never see and that you’ll never get back.

And there’s a day when you haven’t lost a child anymore, you’ve lost their childhood altogether. You’ve been robbed of every precious moment, every once-in-a-lifetime memory, every single funny thing they’ve said and tear they’ve cried. You spend each day losing their scent in the pillows and it will never come back. You howl in pain if someone washes their things because that beautiful baby smell is now gone for eternity.

You miss their fingerprints on the glass in the home you shared. You miss their little voice in your head, what they sounded like when they laughed or how they called you “Mommy”. You desperately search old videos and watch them again and again, just to remember. Although each view is like ripping your heart into two, you do it over and over again. You rotate between obsessing over old photos and being unable to make eye contact with them at all.

There’s a day that you get choked up at families in the grocery store and feel loss in most things that otherwise wouldn’t mean anything to you. You sob when a little girl resembles your own and hugs her mother tight while waiting in line to check out. It doesn’t end. You withdraw from friends or social situations where a child may remind you of your own and the cavernous hole that is now your heart. You alienate yourself from family and friends or worse, they alienate you because they don’t know how to reach out or what to say.

There’s a day where you stop caring about yourself. You lose yourself. You lose how you were as a mommy to that child. You lose the car seat in the car, the mommy and me matching outfits and you gain a scar that is irreparable and that never stops bleeding. There’s a day where people saying to you, “That could kill you” no longer scares you, because death would be a welcome break from the pain.

You stop caring what you look like, how you dress, if you are healthy or in shape. You stop caring about your job, your home, your relationships because you are adrift in a sea of tears and nothing matters anymore. You eventually find your way back to “adulting”. You put on that smile, you get out of bed, you go to work, you clean your house, you nurture relationships and you go about life, but only as the shadow of someone that you once were.

There’s a day where you lose your faith. All of it. You no longer smile and accept gracious words from church family such as, “This pain is for a purpose”, “God has put you in this battle so you can save someone else in a similar trial”, but instead you roll your eyes or feel as though you’ve been slapped in the face. You question everything from God’s mercy, to His grace, His ability to save, His power, His abandoning your child, if He cares and finally if He even exists. You lose the verses you stored in your heart.

You lose the strength and joy that came from helping others and it becomes a distraction from your pain. Your Bible is rarely touched, you stop attending church regularly, you detach from anything that feels like a lie. Namely, God’s love for your and your children. You lose your beliefs. You lose the scripture that you knew by heart, the church family that surrounded you, the songs that you loved to sing at the top of your lungs, the journals that you poured your feelings of desperation into and lastly your desire to keep chasing The One that has seemingly deserted you and your child.

There’s a day where you wonder if they will remember you. You count the days since they’ve been gone and marvel at the fact you’re still here and that you haven’t died from a broken heart. You wonder if they will remember the way you stayed up until 1am learning new Pinterest princess hairstyles, just for them. You wonder if they will remember how you worked 60 hours a week, just to put them in dance classes.

You wonder if they will remember each bedtime prayer and story you recited from memory. You wonder if they will remember how you held them when they cried, how you baked cupcakes with them to celebrate nothing or how you danced to Taylor Swift with them and pretended you were in a music video. You wonder if they will remember the 10 hours they were given to see you in 4 years and if they will remember you both holding each other, on the floor, screaming in agony, with tears covering every inch of you both. You wonder if they will remember being pried off of you and dragged away screaming “I want my mommy.”

There’s a day that you are crushed with regret and failure. You failed to protect your child from a bad person or you lost them due to your financial situation being dire and incomparable for the fight. You want to tell that child every day that you are sorry, even though you have never intentionally done anything to harm them in any way, ever.

You wish you could go back in time and get one last kiss, one more hug or hear their voice one more time. You hate yourself for every time you scolded them or denied them another bedtime story because you were “too tired.” You think of any disagreement you’ve ever had or when you were too harsh, even if only for a moment. You think of every time you rolled your eyes when they asked for that billionth cup of water or claimed that you didn’t cut their sandwich right.

You’d go back and change it all. You’d give them one more cookie, you’d hug them every second of the day, you’d call in sick just to spend a day in their company and figure out the bills later. You’d give and change it all, but all for nothing now. You wonder which memories will be stolen or tainted by the opposing parent and if they will steal everything that was left. Even when you know the answer.

They say that time supposedly heals all wounds, but that’s not my experience so far. I know it’s not been that long in the grand scheme of things. But at 1,354 days out I can tell you I’ve not managed a single day without feeling her absence in my daily life as clear and defined as the nose on my face. She is the ghost that follows me through every motion of every day. The ghost that lives 12 minutes away from me, but that has been forcibly removed from our lives, without just cause.

She is in every nightmare where I can’t save her. She is what I chase in every bad dream. She is the shadow on my heart. She is the darkness that has crept so deep into my being that I can no longer escape it. Some days she still brings me smiles in memories. And other days I will avoid any thought of her, in case I am unable to stop my tears and back myself off of the proverbial ledge. She was my pride and joy, my everything but now she is a ghost that haunts me. One that I cannot and do not want to shake because it’s all I have left.

So again, I wonder if anyone knows the way that one feels this kind of loss. One that is the grief following the loss of a person that is still very much living. A person who was taken from you out of hatred and spite, but not neglect nor abuse on your part. Your baby. The one you carried in your tummy for 9 months and raised. I wonder if anyone remembers that I was a good mom. I wonder if they’ve ever grieved the living.

I wonder if they know that hatred, spite and vindictiveness didn’t steal just my child, it stole my life, my job, my memories, my happiness, my finances, my joy, my ability to love with reckless abandon, my son’s sister, my parents’ grandchild, my siblings’ niece, my daughter’s childhood and who I was. There’s a day where you will experience or ponder each and every one of these. And that day is every day.

This is a story from one of the Empowered Alienated Moms in the closed Facebook group.