I'm not sure if I should be posting here. No one has died. But I have, in effect, lost my whole family. I left home because it wasn't safe for me to stay. My dad was violent and I thought that if I stayed there, I wouldn't make it out alive. So I left.
It's been seven months and I've managed to create a wonderful life for myself - I am financially stable, I have friends that I love and I have adults in my life that I can turn to as well, I'm doing okay at school even though there have been weeks where I haven't been able to get out of bed. All I can really think of is my baby sister. She's 4, going to be 5 in a few weeks, and I've practically raised her. I miss her so much. I miss her so much that my body feels drained from the force of all this grief. I don't think I will ever see her again. The only way I can see her is if I go back home, but it's not safe. And my dad emailed me saying that my little baby goes to my room and cries when she comes home from school. And that I'm going to hell for causing a little child so much pain.
I don't know how to explain to anyone how much it hurts that I have had to leave her. I can't even tell anyone I miss her because my friends are all young, and no one understands what it's like to have raised a child and then lost her. No one understands how painful it is to not be allowed to see her. To have missed seven months of her life. To know that she is hurting and there is nothing I can do. And not to know if I will ever see her, or if I see her, whether she will forgive me, whether she will trust me, whether she will want me. It hurts so much that I can't keep her from hurting, from learning that people who love her can just disappear. When she was born, I swore to myself that I would keep her safe. And now I'm not there. And I can feel her absence like a phantom limb or like a hole in my chest. I wake up sometimes thinking she'll come running through my door. I miss how it feels to hold her. I miss the smell of her sweaty head when she'd come from the park and I'd kiss her. I miss carefully taking off her shoes when she'd fallen asleep, so as not to wake her. I miss how she'd say my name and how she'd sit down next to me and ask to be fed when I'd have lunch. I miss her so much. I don't know what to do with this pain. I don't know how to stop hurting. I don't know how to get to a point where it's all okay. Because it really isn't. It isn't okay. What happened is not okay. And it's not fair that I've lost my baby sister. It's not fair that I can't see her. It's not fair that I've had to lose her to keep myself safe.
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