Dear Fiona

We have all watched a show where, at some point, we saw a little bit of ourselves in one of the characters.

For me, that show was Shameless.

And I really connected with Fiona.

Now, I am not from Chicago, I’m not Irish, and I definitely don’t have as many siblings. But I did grow up in another big city: New York. More specifically, Queens, in what I would describe as a little bit of a Spanish ghetto.

So no, our lives weren't exactly the same.

But there were enough similarities that watching her sometimes felt a little too familiar.

I am the oldest child.

My biological father was never really in the picture growing up, and my sister's father and I have always had a complicated relationship. For a large part of my childhood, my mother was essentially a single mother.

While not every decision she made was the best, now that I am older, I genuinely believe she was doing the best she knew how to do.

She definitely did better than her own parents.

And I think there are so many things we normalize simply because they are what we were exposed to. Sometimes you don't realize something isn't healthy until you've had enough distance from it to see it differently.

So, when I look back now, I don't think my mother was intentionally trying to put things on me that shouldn't have been mine.

I think she was surviving the best way she knew how.

For a long time, our household was just my mother, my younger sister, and me.

And somewhere along the way, my mom began relying on me as a second parent.

Being the oldest child and being parentified made me feel like I couldn't mess up.

There was always this expectation that I needed to be responsible. That I needed to understand. That I needed to help.

My mom would even tell me that I was her best friend.

Now that I am older, I understand that we are all living life for the first time. Nobody gives you a handbook explaining how to be a parent, how to heal from your own childhood, or how to handle every situation correctly.

But at the time, I didn't understand that.

I was young.

And honestly, I was immature too.

I didn't understand how adults could make so many mistakes when I felt like I was never allowed to make any.

There was even a point in high school when I worked three jobs while still going to school.

I was trying to financially provide for myself while also contributing to the household.

Looking back, I am grateful for some of what those experiences taught me. They made me resilient. They gave me perspective on struggle. No matter how hard life got later, there was always a part of me that thought, I've survived harder than this.

And I knew one thing very early:

I didn't want this life for my future children.

But being needed all the time also did something to me.

My mother saw me as her friend, and at the time, that hurt more than it felt good.

Because I knew she depended on me.

Not just physically or financially, but emotionally too.

And when you are a child carrying responsibilities that feel much bigger than you, eventually you start resenting the adults who put them there.

Around this time, I started watching Shameless.

And I know it might sound stupid to say that a TV show affected the way I thought about my own life.

But it did.

It wasn't only the show. I also had mentorship from my JROTC instructor and people around me who helped me see that there were other possibilities for my life.

But watching Fiona hit differently.

Because I understood her.

I understood loving your siblings so much that leaving them feels like abandoning them.

I understood feeling responsible for keeping everything together.

I understood being angry because everyone depended on you while nobody seemed to stop and ask whether you were okay.

And Fiona taught me something I desperately needed to understand:

No matter how much I loved my little sister, eventually I needed to leave.

Not only for my future, but for my peace.

By that point, I was working three jobs partly because I needed the money, but also because I would rather be anywhere other than home.

I kept myself busy because being busy gave me an excuse not to go back.

And eventually, that turned into burnout.

There is such an awful feeling in realizing you don't even want to go to the one place that is supposed to make you feel safe.

Watching Fiona stay for everyone else until she started falling apart herself made something click for me.

If I wanted a different life, I had to leave.

And that was incredibly hard.

Because as much as I wanted something different for myself, I wanted to stay for my younger sister.

The guilt of leaving her was probably one of the hardest parts.

I felt like I was choosing myself at her expense.

But, to my surprise, I actually think things improved after I left.

And with time, I realized something else too.

To an extent, I had enabled my family to depend on me.

Not intentionally.

I thought helping meant loving them.

I thought stepping in meant protecting them.

I thought being the responsible one meant I was doing the right thing.

But sometimes constantly saving people prevents them from ever having to figure things out for themselves.

Maybe I wasn't always warm in the way I expressed that.

Maybe sometimes my version of love sounded more like, "You need to do better."

But it was because I wanted better for all of us in the long term.

And eventually, I had to understand that wanting better for my family did not mean I had to sacrifice myself to make it happen.

At some point, you have to leave.

At some point, you have to choose yourself.

And choosing yourself doesn't always mean you stopped loving everyone else.

Sometimes it means you finally realized that you deserve a life too.

I made the decisions I needed to make for myself.

And strangely enough, leaving allowed some of my relationships to heal.

I can talk to my mother now without every conversation turning into a fight.

I can look at her with more understanding in my heart than resentment.

I can recognize that she was a person before she was my mother. A person with her own upbringing, mistakes, fears, and wounds.

And I can also recognize that understanding why something happened doesn't mean pretending it didn't hurt me.

Both can be true.

I can love her.

I can understand her.

And I can still acknowledge what being the oldest daughter cost me.

Maybe that's what growing up has really been for me.

Realizing that the adults I once resented were human too, while also realizing that the younger version of me deserved more grace than I gave her.

So, in a weird way...

Dear Fiona,

Thank you.

Thank you for showing a teenage girl in Queens that loving your family didn't mean you had to give them your entire life.

Thank you for showing me that leaving didn't mean I loved my sister any less.

And thank you for teaching me that sometimes choosing yourself isn't selfish.

Sometimes it's how you survive.

Till next time HOTTIES (mwah)