Just sent off an email to my sister, whom I haven’t spoken to in about a year.  I told her about what’s going on with my [our] father.  He was admitted into Sloan again today- the lesion on his foot got so bad that he could hardly walk.  I rambled on for a while, but in the end I hit the send button.  I don’t know if she’ll write back, I don’t even know if she’ll get it.

I don’t know what happened between us.  I’m too scared to go back and reread our emails from last January.  I just… I felt like she should know what is going on out here.  I don’t expect her to care.  She probably wrote me out of her life.

Maybe I shouldn’t have sent anything at all.  I’ll probably end up making an ass out of myself and alienating her further.  But it’s too late now.

I’m really starting to lose whatever meager willpower I had.  I don’t know how I keep going, how I keep making it out of bed in the mornings.  I don’t know how I haven’t picked up a drug habit or drinking, or gone back to cutting myself.  I think the only reason I’ve managed so far is guilt.  I don’t know.  I don’t know what I’m talking about.  I’m just so unhappy, so tired, so done with everything.  I’m burned out at 24.  I’m ready to give up.  I want so much out of my life, and just can’t get any of it right now.  I could move out and start my own life, get married and have kids and go back to school.  But where does that leave my father?  I’m stuck here, tied to him because my mother is gone.  I swore I wouldn’t pick up where she left off, but I have.  If I don’t, he’ll just ignore his illness and die.  And I can’t do that.  How can I let someone kill themselves, even if it isn’t directly?  How can I just ignore that he is incapable of caring for himself by himself?  But I’ve become my mother, and I hate that.  I want my own life, not hers.  But having my own life means a whoooooole lotta guilt, and I can’t live like that.  So here I am, stuck.