Hey DNA, Water Lily, & Crazy Legs,
There’s a day I haven’t stopped replaying. Not because it was loud or dramatic or full of chaos.
It was strange because of how quiet it was. How normal it tried to seem.
That was the day everything changed.
No one screamed.
No one said, “This is the moment your life gets split in half.”
It didn’t feel like a kidnapping or an emergency.
It felt like compliance.
We all just… went along with it.
Me.
You.
All of us.
And that’s what haunts me sometimes.
Not the noise, but the calmness of it.
How it felt like we were doing something reasonable, even though it was absolutely insane.
I didn’t fight the way I imagined I would.
Not because I didn’t care—God, I cared.
But because I trusted.
I trusted people who said they were acting in our best interest.
I trusted near-strangers in our community.
I trusted people in tech and law and health and child welfare—even after those systems had already hurt me.
I trusted that surely someone would see that we were good, that we loved each other, that this was a mistake.
But no one did.
And I just stood there.
You stood there too.
And they took you.
And we all complied.
What I’ve Had to Learn
I used to think trust was always noble. That staying calm, listening, cooperating, being patient—that those things would be enough.
But they weren’t.
Sometimes trust is a way to survive.
Sometimes it’s a way to delay panic.
Sometimes it’s a gamble we make with people who’ve already shown they’re not equipped to hold that kind of power.
And some days, I wonder if it wasn’t just failure.
Some days, I wonder if it was intentional.
Because they didn’t just take you away from me.
They gave you to someone I was trying to protect you from.
And they did it with the confidence of people who thought they were running an experiment.
I think they remembered what happened when a physician in a behavioral health setting tried to pressure me into taking medication I wasn’t comfortable with.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t fall apart.
I filed a grievance.
I squared up—calm, clear, precise.
I think they thought if they pushed hard enough—if they took something as precious as you—that I would do it again.
That I would activate.
That I would perform.
That I would give them a reaction worth writing about.
But they’re idiots.
What they didn’t realize is:
I wasn’t performing before.
And I don’t play games I didn’t sign up for.
What I Still Believe
Even though I didn’t fight in the way I thought I would…
Even though I complied in the moment…
I never stopped resisting on the inside.
I never stopped loving you with my whole, broken, trusting, furious heart.
And I never stopped knowing:
You deserved better.
I deserved better.
We all did. We all deserved better.
I believe you’ll come back to these words someday.
I believe you’ll ask questions.
I believe you’ll remember something small and it’ll click,
and you’ll say, “That was wrong. What happened to us wasn’t okay.”
And when that day comes,
I’ll be here.
Not waiting like a ghost—
but building.
Still becoming.
Still yours.
Love always,
Momma
