I Didn’t Want This Life. I Stayed Anyway.

On survival and choosing to keep fighting

I wrote this for anyone who has stayed when it would have been easier to leave.

I’m glad you’re still here.

—

I didn’t fall.

I didn’t jump.

I suffered, but I stayed.

I stayed when my body begged me not to.

I stayed when friends left and the nights got lonelier.

I stayed when my father’s heart stopped, and mine kept going without asking if it wanted to.

I stayed because someone had to.

It’s not heroism.

It’s not bravery.

It’s not anything you put in a Hallmark card.

It’s a small, red-haired boy asking if I’ll be there for his birthday next year.

It’s my mom’s voice on the other end of the phone, tired, trying not to sound scared as she tells me what to take when my blood pressure is 180/120.

It’s my dog curling up against my side because he trusts I’ll wake up again.

I didn’t survive because I’m strong.

In fact, I’m sometimes downright miserable to be around.

But I chose survival because leaving would have broken them worse than it broke me to stay.

I didn’t want this nightmare.

I didn’t want this life.

But when the kids ask me to stay—

when they say, “Can you come to my party?”

or “Will you be there?”—

I say yes.

And somehow, in that moment, they carry me back to myself.

I walk around with a body that doesn’t listen,

a heart that doesn’t beat the way it used to,

a grief so big it rubs blisters inside my ribs.

And still—

Still—

I take deep breaths despite the pain.

I answer texts.

I hum songs I don’t like anymore because they make the kids laugh.

Everything I do is despite the pain.

I lost things I don’t know how to name:

My father.

My health.

My old life, the one where the future was a thing I could touch.

Where I made enough money to buy groceries and Jordans in the same week.

I learned early, when I got sick:

One day becomes now.

You don’t get to say, “Someday I’ll do that.”

If I want something, I have to do it while I still can.

Or it just never happens.

The best part of being young was not having to savor everything.

Not every moment was the end.

Not everything was packed tight with nostalgia, ready to burst.

I got to live without counting how much time I had left.

But now, I count.

I savor even the worst days, because they’re still mine to survive.

And no one patched the hole.

You don’t get that kind of mercy.

You just learn how to live next to it.

How to hold the people you love closer without pulling them into the deep after you.

I stayed.

I stay.

I will stay.

Even when it hurts.

Even when it feels like I’m made of stitches and stubbornness and not much else.

Even when I don’t know what’s left to fight for except them.

What did I keep?

The sound of my father laughing across a kitchen table.

The weight of small hands reaching for mine.

The breath it takes to promise:

I’m still here.

I’m not done yet.

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