Real life black holes

Pica: the feeling I get when I think of our last conversation, "i have made a huge mistake" I just realized you are just a bigger version of our lost scared boys, you have made it further, continued living longer, I know they say that us gringos we feel too much, but I saw it in your eyes, I felt it in the room, there is a black hole inside you, I can feel it inside me now. Yet I can feel you willing me to fill it, trusting me, like nothing about the hardest life I can imagine had hardened you,

What is the most unsettling is you, all our lost boys, are still so eager to smile, to trust, to love I don't know how to connect the two, or even which of all my over active feelings I am having. Its like my feelings are an oxymoron they can't coexist

There are these two combating forces the evil of desparity and pain, abandonment, abuse...and the overwhelming willingness to love and accept love radiating from you, all of you.

Felix

Its a hunt, like a treasure hunt. Walking for hours upon miles through literal sludge made of feces, decomposing waste, and trash. Through sweltering heat even in the darkest alley ways. Wondering with a mission through the biggest and blackest market in central america, accompanied by crack addicts, drug dealers, and back alley prostitutes, we continue searching, looking, hoping, and hunting. Until one day we find him. Hes only 10 but he looks like 6 and he is living on his own on the steets, either abandoned or escaping a life scarier than this hell. I call his name and he stops but is too high to recognize me, the solo white female in a sea of thousands. The last time we met he threw himself into my arms and forcefully wrapped my arm around himself. yet now her flees and in one short moment he is gone. The hunt is over.

Time to start the long walk back and the 2 hour commute possibly hunching over in a micro bus/ 15 passenger van holding at minimum 25 so I can start over again tomorrow. We might not find him, he might not remember us, but he is my treasure and I will continue seeking after him. The hunt goes on.

Long ago heaven was defined to me to have abundant adventure and I remember thinking my heaven would be a treasure hunt for the gold at the end of a rainbow, turns out for me at least this heaven is on earth just no gold and no rainbows but the promise of life from within the deepest depths of decay. And for me this is not hell, this is heaven, with decay, and hate, and pain, so much pain, but with little beautiful lifes, dry, parched vessels just waiting for a drop of love, worth, understanding. There is no greater adventure, for there is no worthier treasure.

I can't do this...

Why did I think I could do this?! I wrote notes to every shallow backpacker I met, and now when the little ones are calling me mama the ones that don't speak to anyone telling me how much they love me, and..., and chupie. ...AND PICA! I feel like my heart is being ripped from my chest. ...and pica what is it that makes it hurt so badly to leave you? I think its because I was able to see just one small peak into your heart and it made me realize YOU are the one in a million, you and alberto and rolando and yerman, the ones that against all odds made it out, with solely the strength of character you have made a life for yourselves, you are still lost boys with the same wounds but with the strength to fight.

Why do I feel so strongly, but suck so badly at expressing any of it?! I am not in love with pica but I have a love deeper than anything I have ever known, deep within my soul, for him, and yaoska, and my lost boys and every child that has cried into my arms for being the most broken victims of this broken world, for rape, abuse, child prostitution, for that gaping hole inside them calling out for the love of a mother, a father, anyone...