I Strive To Emulate Each Of Them

I have spent my life gathering families, pressing them into the fabric of my existence as though, if I held them tightly enough, they would never fray. I etched them around me like carvings in memory… deep, deliberate, and lasting. I arranged them carefully, like constellations, mapping my way by their presence, tracing their light against the backdrop of my own yearning.

I tried to make them stay.

But no matter how carefully I carved, the pieces cracked. No matter how gently I traced, the lines blurred.

I have held these moments in my hands, desperate to preserve them, but memory is not stone… it is sand, slipping through my fingers no matter how fiercely I clutch it.

And the weight of it all… the longing, the breaking, the rebuilding… has seeped into my bones, into the way I move, the way I love, the way I grieve. I spill it onto those I hold dearest, not as a deliberate wound, but as a sorrow I do not know how to untangle from my existence.

I have never meant to harm, yet I have.

This is the inheritance I never asked for, a melody of pain that predates me, a song I did not compose but find myself singing nonetheless. I have taken in the best of them… those I have called family. I have tried to mirror their strengths, to emulate their kindness, to weave their wisdom into my being. But I am not haunted by what I have chosen to keep.

I am haunted by what has chosen to keep me.

The echoes of their sorrows reverberate within me, lodging themselves in the hollows of my heart. Their fears, their hesitations, their ghosts… each has taken root inside me, growing in the spaces where I once hoped to plant something gentler. The goodness is there, I know it is. It always has been. But the darkness… it is louder. It is insistent. It pulses beneath my skin, winding itself into my breath, until I forget that I was ever supposed to write my own song.

And so, I become them.

I mimic. I absorb. I echo.

I take in their mannerisms, their expressions, their ways of coping as though they were heirlooms passed down through generations… familiar, comforting, even when they cut into me like shards of glass.

My father’s cold stare.

I used to think his eyes were small glaciers… beautiful in their detachment, untouchable, crystalline. I envied them, thinking if I could take even a fraction of his gaze into myself, then perhaps I would truly feel like I belong to him as his daughter, and he to me as the man i call dad. So I studied him. I sculpted my own eyes to mirror his… sharp, distant, impenetrable. And now, I find myself lost in them, trapped in the ice of my own making. I have learned to look through people, to press them away with a glance, to convince myself that distance is safety. But I am not safe. I am alone, locked in a gaze that does not thaw.

My mother’s avoidance.

Not my birth mother, as one might assume, but the woman I call my forever mother. Except forever should have meant more than this… more than limbo, more than almost-belonging. I learned from her that some things must not be touched, some wounds must not be acknowledged. I watched her turn away from the darkness in me, watched discomfort flicker across her face when I let too much of myself show. And so, I turned away first. I silenced the words before they could form, swallowed the pain before it could spill over, learned to avoid the things she could not bear to see. I learned to avoid joy, too, because it is a language I do not understand, a world I do not know how to step into.

And my sister… oh, my sister.

She is restless, her spirit forever reaching toward some distant horizon, aching for something more… something vast, something consuming. She reverberates with longing, her hands trembling with the need to grasp something bigger than herself. But I have seen the fear in her, too. I have watched as her fire dimmed, as the weight of expectation smothered her, as she curled in on herself in quiet defeat. And in her, I see myself.

The wanting. The waiting. The war between hunger and hesitation.

And always, always, the fear.

Fear binds us all together, the invisible thread laced through every interaction, every silence, every unspoken ache. It was given to us before we had names for it, passed down like an heirloom we never asked for, never wanted. We have learned to carry it, to mold ourselves around it, to pretend it is a necessary weight… something inevitable, something permanent.

But I do not want to be the keeper of this inheritance.

I do not want to pass it down like a curse written into the marrow of my being.

I do not want my love to be tainted by the pain of those who came before me.

I do not want to be my father’s frozen stare.

I do not want to be my mother’s quiet evasion.

I do not want to be my sister’s caged longing.

I do not want to be the fear that binds us all.

I want to be something else.

Something softer. Something freer. Something that does not weigh so heavily on those who come, years after me. I want to love without the shadow of past wounds distorting its shape. I want to exist without fear curling itself around my ribs, without silence pressing itself into my throat.

We are echoes of each other, distorted reflections cast through the ripples of time. I am like you. You are like me. We are like them. They are like us. And yet, within that sameness, there is still the possibility of choice.

I can choose to break the cycle.

I can choose to step beyond the ghosts of those who came before me.

I can choose to love in a way that does not leave bruises in its wake.

And you… whoever you are, wherever you are… can choose, too.

Be yourself, as much as you can, as much as you dare. Let yourself stretch beyond the limits of what you have been taught to be. Unlearn the weight of fear. Unravel the knots of silence. Speak, even if your voice trembles.

And in doing so, perhaps you will carve a path for those who follow… one where they no longer have to carry the burdens we have borne. One where they are free.

Free to love without condition.

Free to breathe without hesitation.

Free to exist without fear.

And perhaps, one day, we will look back and see not a lineage of pain, but a legacy of something lighter. Something kinder. Something new.

And maybe, just maybe, that will be enough.