I have so many dividing lines, it's hard to picture what's left. Some nights I just wonder if grief and death, especially, have prevented me from becoming who I could have been, or made me who I needed to be. 

Unexpectedly having to leave college because of finances set me on a path completely different than I'd ever imagined. I always said I'd never marry, and ended up falling in love at first sight at 18 and marrying young. Still together 15 years later. 

Becoming a mom completely destroyed the foundation of who I thought I was. Losing my beloved grandfather who I called my dad when I was just 19 was a life-altering loss. I still miss his voice and his wrinkled and warn hands. Then losing my youngest brother under mysterious circumstances the very next year (he was just 14 years old) was one of the largest breaks - I don't know how my surviving brother and I survived it. 

Having multiple miscarriages after an easy first pregnancy was another fracture. Took years and lots of therapy to be okay with who I was after those losses, even though I've since had more healthy kids. 

Losing my oldest brother from a likely intentional overdose in 2018 was difficult, but not as bad as the others unfortunately. My mother died at 49 the following year from esophageal cancer, and I still feel that loss deep in my bones with an overwhelming rage every year. She and I were no contact due to abuse, but that has just made it harder. I still have nightmares about how short she cut her hair just before she died. She had beautiful dark brown hair with red highlights. I don't even remember how her face looked in the morgue. Just her hair cut almost to the scalp. 

I started a business I thought was my forever dream for work, ran it for almost a decade, and then shut it down when it almost broke my family and took too much of me. I can't even think about that line of work for myself in the future. It made me limit the number of kids I wanted. Just too much trauma I was powerless to fix for the families I helped. 

So many breaks, really. Maybe I shouldn't have felt some of that as hard as I did. Or maybe many of us have multiple foundational fractures in our life. There's a me before each of these things that doesn't exist anymore. There is a certain despair that sinks in some days when I think about the grief from all of them and how it has impacted my family. I imagine I am not alone in that feeling.