On paper, my life looks great, looks like everything is finally happening for me. I'm a published author. I'm the Operations Coordinator of a nonprofit. I'm working on my second book. I'm hustling through a business class that could turn my self-publishing into something bigger, something lasting. I'm connected to my community in ways I've never been before. I should be thriving. I should be radiant.

But when I look in the mirror, all I see is a body collapsing on itself. All I feel is loss.

Loss has a way of bleeding into everything. Into milestones of others, the celebrations I should be able to share but can't. My boyfriend's sister just had a baby. His grandma, his Mommal, is over the moon, gushing like her heart can't hold all the joy. And I want to feel it with her, I do. I want to be the kind of woman who shows up with casseroles and smiles, who beams and lets herself melt into auntiehood. But every time I try, all I feel is the hollow ache in my chest where motherhood should have been.

I will never have children. I've carried pregnancies, but never a child. My body betrayed me too many times, and now it's simply too broken to try again. And event if my body could, my other half won't. He has drawn the line: no children. He's held me while I sobbed for a future I will never hold, but the line stays. So when everyone else gushes over this new addition to his family, I don't see joy... I see the ghost of the life I'll never know.

So I poured my mothering somewhere else. I hung my hopes and dreams of traditions, holidays, birthdays, and celebrations into my best friend of eleven years.

She was supposed to be my sister. They were supposed to be my niece and nephew. I dragged her out of hell - out of manipulation, abuse, and danger - and into my home, with two toddlers on her hip. No rent, no strict rules. Just one line in the sand: let him go. Stay safe. Choose yourself. Choose these kids. For months, I twisted myself into knots defenders her, making excuses. I fought with my boyfriend, advocating for her in ways I never thought I would have to, all the while praying she'd mean it this time. She didn't. She chose him. And in choosing him, she discarded me. Eleven years of friendship, of love and loyalty, erased.

I keep waiting for someone to choose me.

That's why this book mattered so much. That's why I threw my body into the fire, breaking myself down to build this world I could escape in. Over eighty thousand words, rewritten time and time again, retyped, reformatted. Covers scrapped, redesigned, rebuilt. Websites, spreadsheets, launch dates, invitations. I carved a decade-long dream into a living thing, into a business. I planned a launch party.

Eight months of notice. Invitations sent out to every friend or family member imaginable. With local businesses and important people, too... two hundred and fifty invitations. The biggest moment of my life. The kind of moment you don't get to redo.

The day came. The day went... and they weren't there.

My family, not there. Not one. My closest friends, not there. Not one. Bryant's family, not there... except one. Bless him, bless Poppal, the only one who kept me from canceling the whole thing right then and there. All in all, about thirty people showed up. I stood in the middle of the most important day of my life, surrounded by my literal blood, sweat, and tears, realizing that no one shows up for me when it matters. Especially not when it really matters.

If my boyfriend hadn't been there, I don't know if I would have survived it.

And maybe I didn't, not really. Because since then, my body has been crumbling.

A week in the hospital, a sword of pain twisting through my spine. No visitors during that time, I might add. An injection while there has bought me time, but surgery waits for me like a shadow at the end of the hallway.

My eyes should have been fixed last year, but the surgical canter canceled my chance. Too overweight, they said. Too risky. And so I live with blurry vision, with every light a dagger to the face, every morning a risk of a torn cornea just from opening my eyes.

My medical chart in general is a mile long. Undifferentiated connective tissue disease, myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome), dysautonomia, Meniere's disease... I could keep going. These diagnosis, they flatten me. They stack on top of one another like weights I can't crawl out from under. Dysautonomia makes my body forget how to regulate itself, leaves me drenched in hot flashes that spark the Meniere's disease. Spark vertigo, spinning rooms, nausea... I feel like I'm crashing into walls while I hold my head in my hands. And the fatigue... I'm not tired. I'm collapsing. I'm standing at the sink and realizing I can't lift the glass to my lips. My nerves are screaming with static while my joints lock against me. Living with these together feels like trying to run a marathon in quicksand... every day of forever.

Then there's the weight. My God, the weight. Sixty more pounds in just a couple months. Enough to keep me from reaching my own body most days, enough that I sometimes shower twice a day to keep the rashes from burning. A miracle medication exists to help me... I know, I've held it in my hands. A few months worth of samples, and I lost weight, my inflammation dropped, my blood sugar steadied. For the first time in thirteen years, my body felt like mine again. I felt free, I felt alive. But insurance said no. And it's not like I have $1,300 a month to buy my way back into feeling normal again. Not even normal.. feeling like I wasn't slowly dying.

I look in the mirror, and I see a blob. A failure wrapped in skin.

And when I think my life can't get any heavier, the weight follows me home. The house. The one place I should be safe. My boyfriend works hard days laboring over cars, only to come home to feed me, care for me, care for the cats, and clean up messes I can't. And the cats... my babies, my lifelines, the reason on many occasions that I'm still here. They have turned the house into a battlefield. Some of them seem to not want the litter box anymore. We've tried everything. Every product, every trick. Still, puddles on the hard wood floor. Fights between me and my other half become louder and uglier. He will never understand how much I cannot give them up, send a single one of my babies off somewhere else. Not when they are the reason I didn't end my life on more than one occasions. Not when giving them up would mean either cages or the end of their life by a needle. But I can feel the ultimatum coming. I can feel the blade pressing against my throat, waiting to sever the best relationship of my life. It's like watching all your hopes, dreams, and love unravel in slow motion. My other half, my better half, falling away from me with every word spoken involving our pets.

So here I am. Living my dream and my nightmare at the same time. A published author, a woman breaking into the world she always dreamed of. And a woman collapsing under the weight of her body, her house, her grief, her ghosts.

I don't write this for pity. I write because this is my truth. Because if you've ever looked at me and though, She's doing so well, you don't see the cost. You don't see the nights I spend staring out in space, wondering how much longer I can keep patching the holes before I finally sink and drown.

I am strong and I am shattered. I am loved and I am unbearably alone. I am hopeful and I am so damn tired.

And maybe this is me asking... who in your life is quietly drowning while you assume they're fine? Who is smiling in front of you while breaking when no one is looking?

And maybe this is me asking you to see me.