I buried my mother last week. And I know, I know you’re supposed to feel all this grief, this deep, soul-shattering sadness, and yeah, there were tears. Of course there were tears. She was my mother, for god’s sake. But the thing is, the thing I can’t tell anyone, is that I also feel… light. Like, physically lighter. Like someone just took a hundred-pound weight off my back, a weight I hadn’t even realized I was carrying until it was gone. Every single day, every single day for the last, what, fifteen years? It was about her. Her appointments, her medications, her meals, her moods. Always her. And now, suddenly, it’s not. And I’m not saying I wanted her gone, not in a million years, but there’s this shocking, almost scandalous sense of freedom that I keep trying to shove down, to hide, because what kind of monster feels like this after their mother dies? I remember looking at myself in the mirror after the funeral, you know, still in the black dress, and I just saw this woman, this middle-aged woman with the greying hair and the saggy bits that just appeared out of nowhere, it seems, and I thought, *who IS that?* Because for so long, my identity was just "her daughter, her caregiver." And even before that, it was just… *her daughter*. It’s always been about her, always. And now it’s just me. And it’s not like I have a sudden rush of things to do, not really. The house is still the house, my job is still my job. But there’s this quiet in the evenings that’s almost deafening, this space that used to be filled with phone calls or checking in or just anticipating the next need. And now it’s just… empty. And I should be missing it more, right? I should be drowning in sorrow, not this weird, almost giddy emptiness. I mean, I *do* miss her, parts of her, the younger version of her. But this version, the one I’ve been living with every day for so long, the constant demands… yeah. I feel this way. And it’s not right, I know it’s not right, but it’s real. And I just needed to say it somewhere, anywhere, where nobody knows who I am and can judge me for it. Because it’s a pretty awful thing to admit. A truly awful thing.