Diaries of a Twenty-Six-Year Old Girl

P for the girl I tried to protect with all of me, never knowing that love sometimes asks you to let go.

Because the version I let go of
wasn’t the girl I used to know.

“You don’t need to be strong… I’ll be strong for you.”

I had always thought that when it came to my sister,
I was the strong one,
while she was cast as the fragile one.

It never bothered me—
she was perfect in my eyes.
And I thought I was noble,
trying to protect her with my love.

They called us The girls—
always together, forever, always laughing.

There was so much laughter.

My favorite memory:
the four of us at a diner one night,
when one friend said,
“Alex will say something and (sister) just laughs.”

It was always like that.

But the love I thought was corroboration of our deep bond
was, in truth, a byproduct of codependency.

And we watched, unable to hold onto each other,
as that unhealthy dynamic followed us into young adulthood.

No one told us that growing up would require separation—
that a lifetime of closeness could not survive without boundaries.

Or that life would ask us to choose—
and that those choices would come with consequences.

The relationships outside our bond
felt like replacements rather than expansions.

Our lack of boundaries gave the illusion of shared autonomy—
when the truth was
I was overextending,
trying to carry what kept breaking.

I tried so hard to get her to see what she kept choosing wasn’t choosing her,
but she wasn’t ready to see it, and I was the one blamed.

She became my responsibility.
Only she wasn’t.

And I lost myself and my sister in the process.

I had to learn she could handle herself—
even if it meant watching her walk a path
I couldn’t follow.

It wasn’t my job to control her.
To make her understand I was hurting,
or teach her a lesson she didn’t want to learn.

I could only control myself

So I walked away.

From a dynamic that demanded I shrink,
asking me to give more than I received.
Telling me it was never enough,
as I tried to bandaid the broken pieces begging me to let go.

I didn’t walk away because I didn’t love her—
I walked away because I needed myself back.

Staying meant hoping she would change,
while I continued to get hurt
in the same ways, over and over.

A cycle of repeated disappointment I had trapped myself in.

And the only way to break it
was to remove myself from it—
even if it meant losing her in the process.

It was a silent, random day with blue skies when I finally let myself move on.

I didn’t need her to tell me what my heart already knew;
I gave myself the closure she never would and simply moved on.

P was no longer perfect…

But I will always carry the memory
of the bond we once believed was unbreakable.

And maybe that’s what real love asks of us sometimes:
to let go, not because we don’t care,
but because we finally care enough to set ourselves free.