today i am thinking about how tampa is the first time ilya tells anyone about his family
eighteen years old and in a foreign country, only six years after he found his mother's dead body when he was only a child, and having no one to share the burden of even knowing what had happened (except svetlana)
watching his father decline and shouldering all the responsibility like he wasn't twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three. no one to share it with but alexei, who never had a drop of kindness or sympathy or compassion.
carrying all of that, all alone, when he was so young, barely an adult.
losing an immediate family member early is an incredibly isolating experience. so few people can relate. people make assumptions about what you're doing at holidays. ask how your parents are. what they do for work. bitch about their own parents. it's so infuriating. it's so lonely.
and he did it without anyone even knowing
