The Bravest Thing

I used to think the bravest thing I ever did was run. But now I know it was actually refusing to run back. The bravest thing was in facing the fear of the unknown in lieu of the comfort the fear I had known for years. And the courage to do this bravest thing came from you. This is the start of your story, baby boy, and the most important chapter of mine.

What pushed me to that final point, that last jump off from which there was no return? It was the unfiltered truth of the possibility of losing you.  For seven months you grew within me, safe, warm and so very perfect. Then a bomb was dropped. As I sat in the hospital room, hooked up to countless machines, listening to the fact that your perfect little self brought an undiagnosed blood clotting disorder forth like a demon from the darkness, I could barely breathe. Please know it wasn't because of the excruciating pain, I'd take that a thousand times over, but because I was terrified for you. Were you hurting?

Then came the question that pushed me one final step closer to that cliff. 

"When will she be able to go back to work?" But it meant so much more than just those words.  The lack of love, of basic compassion and empathy, in those words rang with a new meaning.  Mountains crumbled in my mind when I thought of that being directed towards you.  I may not have valued myself much then but you were everything to me.  You still are.

The night you were born was hectic and scary. I'd been able to keep you safe long enough to enter this world. And I had been growing my courage along with you. For all the tumultuousness that had come before, you came with all the calmness. I was scared something was wrong because you never cried. Not once that night.

As you lay on my bare chest, staring at me like you did this every day, a nurse exclaimed that my IV had broken loose, a jet of liquid arching over me to the floor.  But no, baby boy, that was you. Two minutes old and you were already marking your territory.  I love to hear you giggle about that when I tell you that part of your story.

I knew then I had to keep you safe, this amazing miracle I had been given, and what that meant.  That meant leaving. One day I will tell you the rest of the story, when you are grown, when you are faced with your own difficult path. When you maybe don't value yourself as you should. So that you know how hard it is, and how scary, but that what waits on the other side of the right choice is so much better. That the bravest thing I ever did was run, but the bravest thing on this earth that I have ever known is you.