To the most wonderful woman, I have ever had the privilege of knowing and loving,

At 20 years old, on the brink of 21, and having dealt with copious amounts of existential anxiety, I find myself realizing just how much time that I have left in school and in my young adulthood. I wake up every day dreading what horror I may face in my own mind. Does God exist? Do I have free will? Is there meaning in life? Is this all just a dream? Haunting questions all of them are. I worry that I have wasted my years of youth and I haven't enjoyed life to the fullest that I could have done.

But you've always been a rock and an anchor for me, Mom. No matter how awful I feel, you never complain when I fling myself into your arms like a small kid again and just cry my eyes out. You always give me hope in humankind, and your duty as a mother is a task you have orchestrated flawlessly. Everything that I am today owes you a most heartfelt and sincere "Thank you."

Thank you for loving me unconditionally. Thank you for making me smile when no one else could. Thank you for every simple kind thing you've ever done for me and for others. The measure of your character will always be branded in my mind because of several incidents of selflessness on your part. Perhaps the earliest was at one of my birthday parties as a kid. Maybe I was 7 or 8, I don't remember. But one of my brother's friends couldn't swim, and he had veered into the deep end of the pool we were at, and you were the only one that noticed. You flung yourself into the water, pulling him up from the deep dark depths of what could have been his death.

When you were driving us to school one morning, and we passed a group of children at one of the bus stops on our way, and one of the children, a little girl, had no jacket on this particularly cold morning. You couldn't just leave her there. You pulled over and gave her one of my extra jackets in the car.

We went to a concert one time; I don't remember if it was when I was a kid or a teenager, though. We were leaving the venue, and we passed a single mother holding her daughter in her arms, homeless, begging for change. You couldn't pass them, either. You gave them $20 and shed a tear for them.

Your empathy knows no bounds, and your kindness exceeds that of anyone that I have ever met in my life. I still don't know where I am going in life, and I don't know exactly where my journey will end or when it will end, but I'm glad that I have you as my guardian angel and one of the most important sources of light in my life.

I know that you may feel awful about yourself sometimes, and it pains me so when you do feel that way, but please, whenever you start to get down on yourself, know that your son loves you more than the stars. Your son's love for you extends beyond the boundaries of space, time, and maybe even God's reach.

So thank you. Thank you for all that you are, all that you do, and all that you have made in me. From the bottom of my heart, and I can't say it enough, I love you, Mom.