To the little boy on Wilson

I’ve been meaning to write you for a long time.

I guess I didn’t always know what to say—or maybe I just didn’t feel worthy of saying it.

But I want you to hear me now.

I’ve tried to protect you.

Even when I didn’t know how.

Even when I got it wrong.

Even when I repeated things I swore I wouldn’t.

I’ve tried to hold you close in the only ways I knew how—through work, through pushing, through silence that felt safer than soft words.

I’ve made mistakes. A lot of them.

But I want you to know this, with no hesitation in my voice:

What happened to you was not your fault.

Not the yelling.

Not the silence.

Not the leaving.

Not the pain that came wrapped in love that never looked like love should.

You were just a little boy.

You didn’t deserve to carry what you did.

But you carried it anyway—with a kind of quiet courage no one ever gave you credit for.

And I want to tell you something else:

I’m proud of you.

You made it.

You kept your heart alive, even when the world gave you every reason to shut it down.

You still feel things deeply. You still love people hard. You still try.

And over time—slowly, painfully—I’ve learned how to do better by you.

To stop hiding you.

To stop being ashamed of the way you still show up in me.

I’ve learned to hold your hand when the old fear creeps in.

To remind you that we’re not in danger anymore.

To let you rest.

I’ve learned to look at life not through fear, but through love.

And that started with learning to love you.

So if no one ever said it loud enough for you to hear:

I see you.

I believe you.

And I’ve got you now.

You don’t have to prove anything.

You don’t have to be strong all the time.

You don’t have to fix what you didn’t break.

You just have to be.

And I’ll be here—protecting you, learning for you, and loving you in all the ways you never got back then.

We’re in this together now.

Love,

Me