You Taught Me to Be Relentless

I never got the chance to properly say goodbye, but today I say, “Thank you.”

I couldn’t let today pass me by without thinking of you. I’ve always been the kind of person to bottle my pain, to never acknowledge the damage it does to me internally, so that the outside world never has to see the bruises. Every time I sit down to write, I am too caught up with the idea of who might be reading it to properly delve into the details of my personal life. Today is not one of those days. I am ready to talk about what I feel whenever I think about the fact that you’re not here anymore. You died seven years ago, and it hits me hard every time I remember that you’ll never get to meet the woman I’ve become.

The week before October 9th, 2012, is one I’ll remember for the rest of my life. They hauled you away on a stretcher, and I couldn’t conceptualize the possibility of losing you. No one ever prepared me for what it’d be like to one day lose a parent, no one thought I’d ever need to hear those words. I broke down crying on the phone to a friend as to why I couldn’t go to school that day, but deep down, I tried to convince myself that you’d be fine. I went through the rest of that week, praying that you’d make it out, unable to think about what my life would be like without coming home to you. You taught me how to be relentless. You taught me how to dream, and without you — I never wanted to dream again.

I suppressed every painful memory of that time, going through the motions, and desperately trying to pick myself back up every time I’d fall because it was what you would’ve done. You made sure that I had everything I could ever need to survive, but nothing could make the pain better. I remember what it felt like to wake up every morning and make you a cup of coffee, while I’d sit with my tea and tell you about my life. It was on a morning like that they took you away, and for a long time, I could never sit with a cup of tea at 5 o clock in the morning. It was too hard knowing that you’d never come back.

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