You know when you make a promise and it feels so BIG and true at the time, like written in stone, and you think you’ll never break it and it’s part of who you ARE, and then years later you're sitting in your beat-up car in the dark and suddenly it feels so small and stupid and you just— can’t? I don’t know if this even counts as a confession but it just feels so… heavy. Like a brick in my chest, you know? Years ago, when Dad first started forgetting things, just little bits, like where he put his keys or what day it was, I swore, I PROMISED, to him and to myself and to my ma who was still around back then, that I would never, EVER put him in a home. Not like how my abuela ended up, just fading away in a cold room, and no one really knew what was going on, and I was so young then but I remember the smell and the quiet, and it just felt wrong. And I work with people, you know, I’m a social worker, and I see it all the time, the families who just can’t cope and the guilt they carry and the exhaustion, and I always think, *man, I’d never let it get to that point*, and I made that promise to Dad when he was still mostly there, and he looked me in the eye and said “You promise, mija?” and I said yes, absolutely, I’ll take care of you. And now… now it’s just me and him, and he’s gone beyond just forgetting things, and sometimes he looks at me and he just doesn’t *see* me, and he doesn’t remember my name or who I am, and I find him trying to cook with the stove off or leaving the water running for hours, and the house, it just smells… different now, like old memories and something else I can’t quite place, and I’m so tired. Like, deep down in my bones tired. And I’ve been looking at places, you know, these memory care units, and they have nurses and activities and gardens and people who are trained to deal with, you know, *this*, and I just keep thinking about that promise, that big, important promise, and how it feels like I’m breaking myself to keep it, and I don't know if that’s an excuse or just… the truth of it. And my art, the stuff I used to do, it just sits there, gathering dust, and I don't have the energy to even think about it anymore. And I feel like such a failure, like the worst kind of hypocrite, doing exactly what I swore I’d never do, and maybe it’s not even for him, maybe it’s for me, and that just makes it all so much worse, doesn’t it?