25 years without you.
A lifetime with you in me.
Somehow, both are true at the same time.
There are days when 25 years feels impossible—
like I’ve lived more of my life without you
than I ever got to with you.
A whole childhood.
A whole becoming.
Versions of me you never got to meet.
And I think about that often—
the girl I was when you left,
and the woman I had to become without you.
I learned things on my own
that I was never supposed to have to figure out alone.
I became someone who knows how to hold herself,
guide herself,
be there for herself.
And still…
there are parts of me that wonder who I would have been
if I had you a little longer.
But even in that wondering,
I feel you.
In the way I move through the world.
In the instincts I can’t explain.
In the pieces of me that feel inherited, not learned.
You missed so much of my life.
But somehow,
you didn’t miss becoming part of who I am.
25 years without you—
and still, not a day where you don’t exist in me.
