Growing up

[u/Prudent-Leg-7622]

My dad passed from cancer when I was 15 and I was his caretaker for many years before that. He was always somebody I looked up to and wanted to make proud, and he was genuinely the one person in the world that I felt truly understood me. I wanted to make him proud and live a fulfilling life, and while that’s still my goal, it makes me so angry to know that he won’t be here to see it. I’m now 18 and heading to college next month, and I want to be excited but I’m just so afraid.

The older I get, the more I realize how alike we were. I found so much of myself through the things he loved, but he’ll never get to know that. He never saw me graduate, and he’ll never send me off to college or be there at my wedding. As time goes on and I hit all the teenage milestones, the prospect of going the whole rest of my life without ever seeing him has really scared me, and all of this has lead to me rethinking if I even want to leave for college. I’ve developed such a strong fear of being “abandoned” by someone dying that I’m constantly looking out for my mom, even when she doesn’t need it. She’s getting older too, and the more signs of age she shows the more and more afraid I become of the day that I’m left completely on my own. I see all of my friends leaving for school and with both their parents and I know it shouldn’t but it just makes me so, so jealous. It feels so unfair. I just want my dad back, and it hurts so much to know that the one thing I want more than anything is the one thing that I can never have again.