I remember being exhausted from the 7 hour drive and thinking about submerging myself into my bed. When I stepped into my room I looked at my sister’s empty bed and felt as if she was no longer alive. I sighed at the relief that it wasn’t true and that she was probably not even thinking about anything but organizing her things into her new apartment. My mom walked in as I lay on my sister’s bed and I could see her holding in her tears with her swollen eyes.
My sister had always planned on going to a university. When she applied to all Southern California colleges, and not a single one that was near our home, I knew that what she wanted was freedom. She wanted freedom from acting like a second mother, the freedom from wasting her childhood taking care of me and the freedom from our mother. At first I was selfish. I was angry that she didn’t choose any schools close to our home, close to me. I kept thinking about all the times I felt like she was all I had. Like the time when I was 6 years old and she would cradle me until my “stomach stopped hurting” although I was not a baby. Or the time she would pull me away from my mom that had too much to drink and things started to get intense at home. I felt as though she was leaving me.
When the weekend came to drop her off, I didn’t feel sad. I felt a sort of sense of pride. She had been sacrificing a lot for so long but now she could finally do something for herself.
My sister, mom and I went to a Mexican Restaurant that was not far from her new apartment. We sat and ate tacos and laughed at everything. We laughed about her becoming an “LA girl” and that she could no longer say she was from the Bay Area. We went to her apartment and moved some of her things inside.
“Don’t cry or else mom will start crying and she won’t stop,” my sister said. There was not much emotion in her face. I can usually read her emotions through the way she says things but this time I couldn’t.
“Fine I won’t,” I said. I felt if I cried then it would cause my mom to spiral on the way back home and I didn’t want to sit for 7 hours listening to her cry.
When the time came, we stood outside of her apartment in an awkward stance with the blazing sun causing us to sweat. My mom said her goodbye and started crying, the instant I heard her voice crack, I could no longer hold in my tears. I felt like a little girl being torn away from her mom. It was not the kind of cry that causes you to rub your eyes but the kind of cry that you can feel in the middle of your throat.
The next couple of months were a rollercoaster of emotions but I felt the most lonely. I no longer had the person that comforted me when things got scary or the person who prevented me from hearing the loud arguments during parties that had turned violent. I felt like I had no one. My friends never knew anything about what was going on at home and never really included me in a lot of things. They were just a couple of school friends. At home, my mom was tired of working endlessly and relied on alcohol to keep her happy. I kept myself busy at work and my other extracurriculars but once I got home I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling. I had no motivation to do anything.
It was not until I began doing things on my own when I started to feel better. It started off as a lone trip to target or to an eyebrow appointment that made me feel free. I realized that if there was no one to be physically and emotionally present for me, it wasn’t the end of the world. I started a routine that didn’t involve having to call someone to go run errands. I learned that feeling lonely didn’t have to be a negative feeling but could spark confidence within someone. I’m no longer a little girl that has to stick by her family’s side, something I held on to for so long.
