Running back to our lives

This year I ran a 5k. I am becoming more comfortable with being a reluctant extrovert, and yet I now retreat this weekend to breathe a bit and process the end of a nearly 2 year relationship with our first (and maybe only) foster child. We were hopeful; we were naive; we thought we could make a difference but time has shown us that this is goddamn hard work, highly unsupported and bewildering. A team of professionals are there, working in an unsynchronized way to support the child; we only had each other. And the man-child has emerged as a reptilian like person who feels nothing: no empathy, no care and no boundaries. It is easy to fantasize the fantasy of being a parent, but the reality leaves us wondering.