Those men, those jobs, those nights I scrubbed my skin raw in the shower trying to feel clean again—none ofit meant anything. It was survival. It was the price I paid to keep our daughter safe.
Do you understand what I sacrificed, Stephen?
You were my everything; you always were. You always will be.
When you touched me, I felt clean. When you held me, I felt safe. When you told me you loved me, I believed, for just a moment, that maybe I could be someone different.
Someone better.
Someone worthy of you.
I will love you until the day I die.
And that day is coming sooner than I expected.
My hands are shaking again. I had to stop writing for a few minutes. Had to put the pen down and just breathe. But breathing hurts. Everything hurts.
That’s why I started this journal. The prognosis is not good. The doctors use words like “aggressive” and “late stage” and “palliative care.” They don’t say the word “terminal,” but it hangs in the air between us anyway. I’ve thought about reaching out to you. Contacting you and telling you where we are so you could come and get our daughter.
Protect her.
But I’m selfish.
I can’t live without her.
And I’m ashamed to face you. Afraid to look you in the eyes and let you see all the ways I failed her. Failed you. Failed myself.
I can’t bear to see the disgust and disappointment I know I’d find there. Because you would be disgusted, wouldn’t you? If you knew what I did. The things I let them do to me. The things I did for them.
You would look at me the way I look at myself.
Like I’m nothing.
Like I’m worthless.
And I don’t want you to see me like this.
I don’t want her to see me like this.
I wish she didn’t have to be the one who helps me to the bathroom at three in the morning when I can’t make it on my own. Who holds my hair back when the nausea hits. The dark circles under her eyes get deeper every day. She tries to hide them with makeup, but I see.
I always see.
She smiles when she comes into my room. But I see the way her jaw tightens when she helps me into the shower. The way she looks away when she has to wash me, help me dress, do all the things a mother should do for a child, not the other way around.
And I want to tell her she doesn’t have to be strong. That she can break down. That she can cry and scream and rage at the unfairness of it all.
But I can’t. Because if she breaks, I break.
This is what she’ll remember, Stephen. Not the birthday parties or the bedtime stories or the times I made her laugh. She’ll remember this. The smell of sickness. The sound of my breathing getting worse. The weight of responsibility that no child should have to carry.
She’ll remember her mother dying.
That will be her last memory of me.
And this is why she can never know the rest. Because if she knew, if she understood the full weight of my choices, it would destroy her. It would take this grief, this exhaustion, this trauma of watching me die, and it would add betrayal on top of it.
It would poison every memory she has.
