It Feels Like I'm Dying

Grieving who I used to be…

Nobody tells you that when you leave everything you once knew behind, it can feel almost like you’re dying.

Because a part of you is.

An old shell. An old life. The girl you used to be.

The last time I felt grief like this was when my mom died in 2017.

Even then, life kept moving around me. I was still at swim practice. Still stretching on the floor during yoga. Still pretending my body wasn’t carrying a heaviness my mind could barely hold. The hospital was right across from my high school, and when I got the call that it was time to go say goodbye, I remember walking there shaking. My heart hurt. My stomach hurt. Everything in me hurt.

I walked into those white walls and that sterile hospital smell, and suddenly everything felt too real. I held her hand. I told her I loved her. I told her I was sorry. I wanted to say don’t leave me, but I think some part of me already knew she was gone.

Later that night, I got the phone call.

And just like that, through the sound of somebody else’s voice, my whole life changed.

My mom was dead.

Before that, I spent so much time trying to prepare myself. Trying to detach. Trying to convince myself that if I braced hard enough, maybe it would hurt less. Maybe I could somehow train my heart for loss. Maybe I could get ahead of grief.

I couldn’t.

You cannot prepare yourself for losing the most important person in your life. The person who taught you what love is. What safety is. What unconditional love feels like. She took a part of my heart with her when she died, and I think I’ve been trying to find my way back to it ever since.

I’m still learning how to love myself the way she loved me. And that hurts to admit. Because for a long time, I really thought I was getting somewhere. But when I sit with myself long enough, when I’m really honest, I don’t love myself nearly as much as I thought I did.

It’s like some part of me is still waiting for her to come back and teach me how to do it again.

But she never will.

And now, getting ready to move across the world, I feel that grief rising up in me all over again.

Because everything that made me is here.

My childhood was here. My first steps were here. My first heartbreak was here. My sister was born here. My mom was getting sick here. My mom died here. The joy, the chaos, the love, the sadness, the becoming. All of it happened here.

There are some memories that don’t just live in my mind. They glow.

I think about the apartment complex I grew up in. Huge. Crowded. Full of immigrant families who had just come to America carrying their whole lives in a few bags and a thousand dreams. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t polished. But it was alive. It was safe. It was ours. There was always somebody outside. Somebody talking. Somebody laughing. Somebody grilling. Somebody watching their kids. There was community there in a way that feels so rare now.

In the summers, my mom would take my sister and me to the pool and we would stay there all day. She’d sit nearby talking to her friends, watching us, and at the time it felt so ordinary. But now I know those were some of the richest moments of my life. Sun on my skin. Chlorine in the air. Kids screaming and splashing. My mom there. My sister there. Me there.

Safe. Loved. Home.

And then my dad would come home from construction.

He was always exhausted. Sunburnt. Worn down. His body carrying the proof of how hard he worked for us. But no matter how tired he was, he still smiled when he saw us. I can still picture him coming around the corner in that golden hour light, whistling to get our attention, and my sister and I running to him like nothing else in the world mattered except that our dad was home.

Swimming was a part of my whole life too. I grew up in the water. I grew up as an athlete. My dad came to my swim meets and was my biggest supporter every single time. Even on the days when anxiety was eating me alive, when I wanted to disappear before I ever stepped onto the block, he was there. Watching me. Cheering for me. Believing in me when I didn’t know how to believe in myself.

And then I’d come home, and my mom would sing “ole, ole, ole, ole,” like my own little victory song.

It’s those moments I keep grieving.

Not the grand ones.

The ordinary, sacred ones.

I think about the day I found out my mom had cancer. I was little. Too little to fully understand, but old enough to know something was wrong. I remember looking into the trunk of the car and seeing a book about breast cancer. I don’t remember the exact title. I just remember the feeling. That quiet, sick feeling when your world changes before anyone has even explained it to you.

A book in the trunk, and suddenly nothing felt the same.

I think about the day my sister was born.

I wanted a sibling so badly, and she came eight years later. I got to name her, which made me feel so important, so connected to her before she was even here. I remember bringing a stuffed animal and a Shrek DVD to the hospital and being so ridiculously happy to meet her. She was tiny and red and funny-looking like most newborns are, but I loved her immediately. Completely. Overwhelmingly.

And now that same life — the one that made me, shaped me, held me — is becoming my past.

My heart, my gut, all of me hurts. It knows that moving across the world and leaving everything behind is the right move. And I think that’s exactly why this hurts so bad. Because I know Spain is a step in the right direction. I know this new chapter is part of me finally learning how to love myself better. More honestly. More fully.

And that makes it harder.

Because in order to become that girl, I have to leave behind the life that made me.

That is what hurts.

Not just leaving a place. Leaving versions of myself. Leaving the streets that knew me when I was little. Leaving the walls that held my grief. Leaving the home that held every version of me. Leaving my dad, who has been my steady thing, my safe thing, the person who kept showing up for me over and over again. Leaving my sister, who is tied into so many of my happiest memories and so much of my everyday life. Leaving the home that watched me become who I am.

Everything that made me, me, is about to be left behind. Not erased. Not gone. But placed in the past. No longer my present. No longer something I can reach for whenever I need comfort.

And no matter how many times I try to game-plan it, romanticize it, or act stronger than I feel, I can’t outthink this pain.

It is here.

It is real.

And I can no longer pretend this isn’t hard.

I am leaving one version of myself behind so I can meet another. A new girl. A girl who loves herself, actually loves herself, believes in herself, and cherishes her soul the way my mother used to.

Maybe that is what this is really about.

Maybe this is not just grief.

Maybe this is becoming.

And in some strange way, although I’m doing this for myself, I feel like I’m doing it for her too.

The life she wanted and never had.