Thirty Hours of Darkness, Thirty Hours of Love

There are moments in life when time splinters, when reality fractures into something surreal and unbearable. The day my daughter (15) vanished was one such moment… a night that bled into morning, then afternoon, then almost another night. Thirty hours. Thirty relentless, merciless hours.

She went for a walk and kept walking. Then, lost in the guilt of returning home too late, she continued. And continued. Until she had walked herself into oblivion. She found refuge on Trax, curling into its cold embrace as the city’s night rhythm carried her forward. When the trains shut down at eleven, she resumed her wandering, swallowed by the vast, indifferent night.

And we, her family, her friends, her entire world, were left to search.

The moment we realized she was missing, the earth shifted beneath us. We tore through every possibility, every shadow, every last known moment. The police were involved, though their presence felt hollow, bureaucracy moving sluggishly in contrast to our panic. The FBI, a private investigator, friends, extended family, coworkers, strangers from Facebook, Instagram, Nextdoor app, and TikTok… an entire community galvanized by desperation. Her face was passed from one pair of shaking hands to another, from one set of frantic eyes to the next. Every resource, every connection, every thread of hope was woven together into a net, cast into the unknown to bring her home.

Not many slept. I certainly didn’t. Some of us refused to rest, as if sheer vigilance could summon her back. In those endless hours, we ran on adrenaline, fueled by an ache so profound it carved itself into our bones.

And then, the fear.

It came in waves, gnawing at the edges of my sanity, whispering horrors I tried and failed to silence. The mind is cruel in moments like these, crafting nightmares more vivid than any reality. It offered me every grotesque possibility: She is gone. Someone took her. She is in the hands of a monster. This is a Lovely Bones story, or worse. Possibly so much worse.

I believed… no, I convinced myself, that if I imagined the worst, nothing worse could possibly happen. But fear is insidious. It doesn’t stop at the first horror… it escalates. One unthinkable thought spawns another, and another, until your body becomes a prison, shaking and suffocating under the weight of your own imagination. I cycled between panic and grief, between hope and despair, between praying to a God I wasn't sure existed or waslistening and internally screaming into a void that gave no answers.

I couldn’t eat well… I ate mostly sugar, which I never crave unless I’m unraveling I guess…. I couldn’t breathe properly. I cried in jagged, unpredictable bursts, the kind that leave your lungs burning, your ribs aching. The kind of crying that makes you wonder if you will ever stop.

And then… thirty hours later… after we were on another search, our doorbell camera notofied us… she was home.

I still don’t know what it was that released me first from the heart wrenching pain i was still in: the sound of the door opening, the sight of her standing there, or the moment she crumbled into her dad and sister’s arms. But something in that second… watching my two daughters cling to each other, sobbing into each other’s shoulders, loosened the grip around my heart. A dam broke inside me, and the weight of those endless hours lifted, if only just enough for me to breathe.

Kesly, was undone. I hadn't seen her break like that in a long while, and it nearly undid me too. Jason held our daughter close, as if to tether her to the earth, as if to ground himself in the proof that she was real, alive, here.

And then Olga arrived.

If I am being honest, I was nervous. The walls between us are high, fortified by silence, by old wounds, by the quiet hostility of unresolved tensions. But when we sat on that couch, Olga, Emily, Jason, and me, it was not division that I felt. It was something else, something unspoken but undeniably present. I wanted to vocalize it, name it, get everyone to notice and embrace It. But I stayed quiet. Selfishly feeling it myself. For the first time in what felt like forever, there were no battle lines drawn. No fractures, no grudges, no barriers. Only four people bound by the same love for the same girl. We were simply a family.

And that… that moment, that realization… is what lingers in my heart.

She has two mothers who love her. Love that is imperfect, love that is messy, love that is shaped by circumstances neither of us chose, but love nonetheless.

She has a father whose devotion is unwavering, whose love is as steady as the tide, as unshakable as the mountains.

And she has a sister who shattered when she was gone, who sobbed with the kind of relief that only comes when you have been holding your breath for far too long.

I come from a world where love was never guaranteed. Where people left, where doors closed, where belonging was something fragile and easily lost. A world where rejection was the rule, not the exception. And yet, somehow, against all odds, I have built this… this family, this life, this kind of love that I once believed could never exist for me.

Losing someone… almost losing someone… reminds you just how much they mean to you.

And the truth is, I love harder than I let on.

Every person in my life, every soul I have gathered along the way, is a part of me.

And when they are near, when they are safe, when they are here, I am whole.

I have learned to take life as it comes…. Accepting death and being ok with whatever comes after is something I'm working on.