to hope held together with shaking hands,
that love could bargain with death.
I became someone built from fear.
From prayers whispered into the dark
that maybe we could buy more time.
maybe I could still give him
the things he wanted to see
before he left this world.
A grandchild in his arms.
A life that looked right.
I remember the relief in his eyes
when I brought a man home.
what he thought was only a phase.
was tangled with expectation,
neither of us knew how to say.
everything I had been building toward
None of it felt urgent anymore.
Because somewhere along the way
I had not been living for myself.
It felt like a star folding inward,
gravity crushing everything at its centre.
But the supernova came later—
After the flowers wilted.
After the last thing I could ever do for him
grief feels unreal in my memory.
Like smoke I can almost hold
before it slips through my fingers.
I wanted to remember everything.
is the phone call from Mum
and the ambulance driver’s voice
burned permanently into my chest.
people expected life to continue.
But how do you return to normal
when you no longer recognise yourself?
Every room held reminders.
Every silence sounded like failure.
I felt as though I was surviving only at the surface,
just trying not to drown.
I carried guilt like a second skeleton.
Because I wanted him to stay alive
even when I knew he was suffering.
Because I could not bear losing him.
the life he wanted to see for me.
that fit neatly inside his hopes.
it felt like I had spent my whole life
Because danger was easier than grief.
Because numbness was easier than truth.
I had been burying myself alive
Suppressing parts of who I was
When I finally let myself speak it—
the first time you touch it.
Because the person who stood beside me
through the worst years of my life,
through grief and ruin and survival,
I no longer recognised as mine.
was built around the version of me
I had once promised to become.
The version shaped by fear.
By my father’s dying wishes
echoing louder than my own voice.
But after my father died,
Not because I stopped loving him.
Not because he wasn’t enough.
But because I could no longer force myself
into a life that no longer fit.
And that was the cruelest part of all.
Because he loved me honestly.
And I knew that if I stayed,
I would slowly destroy us both.
Not because he failed me.
But because I needed to free him
from the person I was trying to become for everyone else.
The other night he told me
because it was comfortable.
Comfort does not split you in two.
Does not make you grieve the future
while still loving the person standing in front of you.
a life that truly fits them too.
