Sometimes you just find yourself in the pantry, surrounded by cereal boxes and forgotten cans of soup, and the tears just start coming. (Silent ones, of course, because God forbid anyone hear you actually fall apart.) You know that feeling when the day has been one endless string of demands and you've met every single one, but inside you're just screaming? That's it. It’s been twenty years since the diagnosis, and it still feels like yesterday, and every single day is a fight, a negotiation, a performance, and you just want to lie down and not get up, but you can’t, because there’s dinner, and therapies, and the endless fight with insurance, and the endless fight with yourself for feeling like this. You gave up everything, didn't you? Your career, your friends, the easy dinners out, the quiet nights in (those are a distant memory now), and you don't regret it, not really, but sometimes you just wonder who YOU are anymore, beyond being 'the parent of,' 'the caregiver for.' And you catch a glimpse of yourself in the dark reflection of the pantry door, and you don’t even recognize that person looking back, and you just cry harder because it’s a stranger, and she’s exhausted, and she’s just… gone. And tomorrow it all starts again. It never stops. You just keep going.