Mom is struggling so much because she both has to deal with grieving the loss of her ex-husband-turned-good-friend and with the fact that knowing how it feels to lose her parents does not magically imbue her with the ability to protect my sister and me from having to live through this

Chelsea is my younger sister by five years, but because she's so much better at having her shit together she's the one who has had to do a lot of the heavy lifting that I as the eldest should traditionally do. She's been taking Dad to medical appointments for years, been handling things, will still be handling much of the logistics

of his death

and even way before that, she was always a daddy's girl. i was mama's girl, she was daddy's girl.

Dad is not my biological father. this has no bearing on our bond; he adopted me when he married Mom. that marriage didn't even last a decade, but it did produce his biological daughter. didn't matter. he was both our dad, loved us both

once a couple/few years ago, when i was visiting him, he told me that the blood relation and lack thereof didn't matter, that he loved me as much as if i were his biological child. i told him i knew that and had never doubted it. it was maybe the most important conversation we ever had

I have his family name as my last name, and it's so precious to me as evidence that my dad loved me and considered me his child in every way that mattered

plenty of men would have cut me out after the divorce and acted like their blood daughter was their only daughter, or from the beginning would have refused to raise another man's child. he didn't. he loved me as his own, from the beginning to the very end.

i feel in some ways even more his daughter than if we had been biologically related. he chose me. he chose me when he and mom married, he chose me when they divorced, he chose me as his daughter for the rest of his life

i can't say what that means to me, how important it was to me when he was alive and how profound it is now. I had a dad, I lost my dad, i fucking miss and want my dad, because he chose me

so fuck this plot twist

at least one of the writers of my life will never work again

hugs tight

he sounds like a good man I wanna fire that writer, too