You've got me stuck between a rock and a hard place here. If I say nothing, you'll do nothing and nothing will change. But when I do say something, there's all this unwarranted emotion behind it (many years worth) and I end up saying the wrong thing. Or the right thing, in the wrong way. Then you always look like a little kid who got caught eating cookies before dinner. I hate that look.

The worst part is I don't know how much of this you can control. I don't know how much of it is actually your fault. Why does it seem like every other person on the planet is able to function better than you? Why does it make me feel like scum when I tell you that? Probably because you are already thinking it. I don't want you to think it. I don't want to say it.

I only asked you to do the dishes today. Just get out of bed long enough to do the dishes. The fucking dishes!

I'm afraid of turning into you. I try not to allow it, but I see it in little ways. It scares me to death. I can't be like you. I won't. But I learned from you, and some things you never taught me.

You break my heart daily. To know I'm not enough to fix this. To know you are hurting so deeply. It seems like you've given up and it hurts to know that I'm not good enough for you to try. Then you say you are trying, but there's no evidence of that.

V tells me she can tell almost immediately when you're not doing well. She lives in another country! Here I am, living across the hall, and I'm blind. Or maybe I've given up too. I'm so confused. Why can't you just be normal. Please, just be normal.

You used to say I understood you best. But now I'm not so sure. I think I just never challenged you, I just let you be. I was just a kid then. I used to be happy just to make you smile, now I expect more. Maybe now I'm jaded and broken to see things the way I used to.

This very moment, I'm realizing, it's not you that's changed, it's me. Should I have expected more from you all along, or have you always given me exactly what you could and I just never realized it?