Whining, Wine-ing & Winning

I started watching The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. I knew it would be heartbreaking. I wasn’t prepared for the moment I paused the TV, walked upstairs, and hugged my daughter. Not because I think I’m a bad mother. It was the first time I truly understood, in the deepest part of me, what it means to be one. I looked at her and all I could think was, “How?”

How do you hear your child cry and not run to them? How do you see fear in their eyes and not want to take it away? How do you watch someone so small, so innocent, so dependent on you and choose to hurt them instead of protect them? I don’t understand it. I don’t want to understand it.

Every instinct in me says the opposite. Every instinct in me says to pick her up, hold her tighter, tell her she’s safe, and promise her that as long as I’m here, I will move heaven and earth to protect her.

Tonight, I’m heartbroken for a little boy I never met. A little boy who should have been tucked into bed, who should have been hugged, and who should have known, without question, that he was loved and that he was safe. Every child deserves that. And I wish with everything in me that someone had held him and told him so. And I hope his parents rot in hell. Fuck them.