23.

I am young. I am in the south. Many of my school mates have children. Many are the same age as mine. We are not alike. I am not better than them. My brain functions in a way that few can comprehend. I don't doubt that other mothers love their children unconditionally. Isn't that what a mother does? The love I feel for my daughter is stronger than any emotion I have ever endured. The painstaking first heartbreak as an adolescent, the defeat I felt when I dropped out of college, the numbness my childhood was surrounded with...none of it compares to this life I am responsible for. She is everything. She has grown taller and stronger because of a milk my body has made to nourish her. She falls asleep and wakes up by my side everyday. We have never spent a day apart. She is my best friend, my shadow, my whole heart. 

And I will be damned if I let corporate greed make decisions for her. I will get 2500 second opinions. I will travel states. I will go in debt on supplements. I will and have altered my diet so drastically that somedays I go hungry. I eat only what she can have. Somedays it feels like my stomach is eating itself. I crave spaghetti, toast with GMO jelly. Pancakes. Cokes. Instead I eat eggs that are $5 a carton and $7 bacon that lasts 2 days. This is sacrifice. And I am damn strong for doing it. Do you understand this? Somedays I resent my husband so much that I could just cry. Why can't he be the responsible party for this? Why can't he share some of the blame? Regardless of the issue at hand, whether it be gluten intolerance, lip tie, nursing, magnesium deficiency. It is my cross to bear.