09/23/22

You and I lived our lives side by side. Even before I existed, when you were locked away in your tower, abused by a merciless witch, you fantasized about your escape. About the children you would have, about the life waiting for you on the other side. I wasn’t even an embryo, yet I was already with you. The depth of our bond was the stuff of legends, an otherworldly fantasy turned reality turned horror show.

I feel myself growing, forced to become a better person, because the only other option is to give up. Something you never did. No matter how impossible life got, you kept going.

Sometimes I hate this better person I’m becoming because of the circumstances that birthed her. I am more mature, less selfish, a better listener, more forgiving, not as petty, and it’s all because you died.

I never understood how it could be painful to grow until now. Sometimes we grow by choice, and sometimes our worlds are turned upside down and the best person we’ve ever known is dead and we have to keep going because they would want us to and the people they loved need us to and every day without them brings new challenges we could never foresee and we somehow find ourselves rising to meet them without even meaning to.

I was a shittier person when you were alive. I knew you would be there to socialize for me, to end arguments, to listen to me feeling sorry for myself without losing patience, to know when I was upset and force me out of my shell, to be waiting for me on our lime green couch, ready to listen to me babble for hours.

You deserved this daughter, the one who knows how to take care of herself and doesn’t need her mommy for every little thing. This less demanding, gentler version of me I was forced to find in your absence.

You begged me to please let you die. You needed my permission, and sometimes, I hate myself for giving it. What if I had been selfish, if I had insisted you stay. What would have happened then? Would you still be here? You asked so little of me. To deny you this final mercy felt cruel, even if granting it felt soul crushing.

I couldn’t have done what you did in the hospital, would have given up weeks before. You weren’t done with life, but life was done with you, and the choice I always imagined myself making, the kicking and screaming and hooking your body up to countless machines because anyone but you, that choice wasn’t an option because there was no compassion in it and compassion was the one constant that flowed through your veins for the twenty-nine years I knew you. You were a fighter. You would have kicked and screamed for me, which was why I chose to make Dad my proxy years before when we sat in an office and signed paperwork we assumed would be irrelevant for decades to come.

For you to die was for me to die. Perhaps the most loving act I performed as your daughter was to please let you die, and that tears me up inside.