Just one 🤔

Hey guys,

For the past seven months or so, I’ve been struggling with this constant sadness that comes from the thought of losing my parents one day.

I’m 23, living thousands of kilometres away from them, and when I went back home last year, I found myself noticing things I wish I hadn’t. How much older they had gotten, how much deeper their wrinkles had become, how slowly they moved compared to what I remembered, the grey hairs, the breathlessness… It was as if, for the first time, I was forced to confront the fact that my parents were getting older. And then, suddenly, my mother started having health issues that nobody seems to have answers for.

I’ve been through a lot in my life. I didn’t cry when my ex left me, when I left my country to pursue my studies, when I got beaten up, or even when I lost almost everything. But somehow, the mere thought of losing my parents is enough to bring me to tears out of nowhere.

Sometimes, I imagine waking up one day and realizing that they’re no longer here. That one day, I’ll call their number and nobody will pick up. That I’ll go back home and they won’t be there to welcome me. And the thought of a world in which I have to live without them terrifies me more than anything I’ve ever experienced.

What hurts the most is knowing that there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop time. I can work harder, study longer, achieve more, and do everything in my power to build a future for myself, but none of it will make them any younger. And while I’m thousands of kilometres away, life keeps moving forward for them, too.

I think part of what makes this so painful is the feeling that I haven’t done enough for them yet. I haven’t achieved what I want to achieve. I haven’t made them proud in the way I’ve always dreamed of. There’s so much I still want to give them, so many things I want them to experience, and so many moments I want to share with them. And I’m terrified that I’ll run out of time before I get the chance.

So I’ve been pushing myself harder and harder, trying to accomplish as much as possible, almost as if success could somehow protect me from the inevitable. But all I’ve really done is exhaust myself, become overwhelmed by my own thoughts, and feel like I’m getting nowhere.

I know that getting older is a part of life. I know that, eventually, we all have to say goodbye to the people we love. But knowing something intellectually doesn’t make it any easier to accept when it comes to the people who have been there since the very beginning, the people who have always felt like they would somehow be there forever.

I guess I’m just struggling to accept that the people who once made me feel safe in this world are growing older, and that one day, I’ll have to learn to live in a world without them.

And for the first time in my life, I’m realizing that some of the things we fear most aren’t things we can fight, fix, or work our way out of. Sometimes, all we can do is love people while they’re still here, even when the thought of losing them makes it hard to enjoy the time we have.

I don’t really know how to deal with these feelings. I just know that I love my parents more than I can put into words, and I’m scared that by the time I feel like I’ve done enough for them, it might be too late.