Where Do I End & You Begin

The complexities of judgment, separation, and connection between you (the reader), you (Margaret), and I.

Where Do I End & You Begin

The complexities of judgment, separation, and connection between you (the reader), you (Margaret), and I.

An agreement between you and me:

It’s okay to judge me—I understand judgment. I understand the desire to think you’re better than me, more pious, more caring. And you are, I assure you. I want you to feel whatever it is you feel when you are feeling it while you are reading.

On a recent walk, a friend mentioned that everyone places themselves at the top of their moral hierarchy. With that comes an assumption that your choices are the right choices and others’ choices are wrong or less valid. Maybe you don’t always do this, but when you find yourself judging others, imagine a pyramid. At the top rest your decisions, sitting comfortably. Those you love might be somewhere in the middle. And everyone else? If you’re feeling generous, look down. Do you see them? I am down there, sitting in the mud. Paradoxically, in my mind, I was still doing the best I could at the time.

My mother and I’s relationship:

When I was young, my mother had what my sixth-grade teacher called “me-toos.” At the time, it wasn’t clear to me what this meant. The “me-toos” were my teacher’s personal pet peeve. To illustrate, a conversation might begin with one person expressing their struggles, and the person they confided in would respond, “Wow, me too!”—stealing the spotlight and shifting attention away from the original speaker.

I don’t remember exactly what annoyed my teacher about this, but trust me, I might be misremembering. My mother’s “me-toos” often revolved around pain. For example, if I said, “I’m sick, my tummy hurts,” the proper response would have been sympathy: “I see you’re in pain. How is that for you?” But my mother would respond, “Me too.” She would claim to feel my pain. She insisted that when I hurt, she hurt too. If I were being stabbed, she said, she could feel the blade—imagining it slicing past her internal organs.

And, of course, it drove me crazy. Her intentions—to both relate to me and express her feelings—were completely lost on me. “How do you know what it’s like to be me? To feel what I feel? You are not me.” Even now, I feel a deep repulsion at the idea that anyone, especially my mother, could understand what it’s like to be me.

This hierarchy—from the person in pain, to those close to them, to acquaintances, to people on the other side of the world—was foundational to how I was raised. Individualism, as I understand it, has a vertical hierarchy: the person directly experiencing pain deserves the most sympathy. No one else can truly understand.

Margaret and I’s relationship:

And maybe this is right—maybe we can’t really understand what others are going through. But I’ll admit, I feel a certain selfishness as I say this. A deep insecurity about my emotions, even though I have little control over them. This is the context of my current situation:

We are in the process of separating—you and I. The “you” in this story is not you, the reader, but my daughter. She is five. We are growing apart, as society insists we must, becoming individuals. Yet you, dear reader, are also “you.” We, too, are growing apart. The laws of physics demand it, pushing us into free-floating entropy. We probably will never again be as close as we are now.

I’m not sure if this makes sense, but as you looked down earlier and saw me, relationally, I want you to imagine us—you and I—as beings in proximity. We are surrounded by a vast cosmic void and yet exist within the same time and space. The odds are incomprehensible. And yet, here we are.

We started off on the wrong foot, you and I (you, the reader, and Margaret, my daughter). When you left my body, I could feel things were different. You were you, and I was me. Yet I could still feel things with you. On our first hospital stay, when you were five days old, we listened to Native American flute music. I tried climbing into your hospital crib, unsuccessfully, and begrudgingly slept in a chair on the other side of the room—a distance that felt unbearable.

Walking the halls of Oakland Children’s Hospital, I noticed something. I could hear other babies cry and feel sadness. A pain that was outside of me. But when you cried, my spine lit up with needles, an internal alarm demanding action. If you were upset, so was I. And when you were calm, which was rare, I felt relief—a massage to my anxiety.

I could also sense when something was wrong. Not crying often meant you were sick. Silence was a warning sign. But I’ve learned fear isn’t always reliable. For example, the idea that people eat when they’re hungry didn’t apply to you. Living, even eating, seemed like too much effort. So you slept.

On our second hospital stay, after we received your cystic fibrosis diagnosis, a doctor told me not to worry because you wouldn’t remember any of it. This was meant to be comforting—a reassurance grounded in her understanding of memory. But I didn’t find solace in her words. I remember it. And I am convinced that you, Margaret, do too. Maybe not the details, like the nurse Grandma Mimi argued with or the parents I judged down the hall for leaving their baby alone at night. But I promised myself you would never be alone at night, not while I was around and you wanted me near.

The hard part of separation is that you are five, and I am 41. You understand the world through five years of experience, while I carry many more. I still wonder if watching your child suffer is harder for the child or the parent. It’s an unpopular question, shifting focus from the person in pain to someone else. But because you were so young, I’m not sure how much you understood about what was at stake.

Today, during circle time at preschool, the teacher asked a question. Your quiet hand went up, and you gave the same answer I was thinking. This happens often. “Mama, I have to tell you something.” “Margaret, I have to tell you something.” The content doesn’t matter; our brains often generate the same thoughts.

You’ve never been a child who enjoys cuddling on command. I suspect, even though I’m not supposed to say it, that your love language won’t be touch. Yet in the mornings, after your first breathing treatment, we cuddle. It soothes the transition from your screen time to the rest of the day. These moments on our couch, despite its worn and grubby state, are where I want to be.

For a few minutes, you tolerate my arms around you. I admire you, feeling a bittersweet longing for these moments to last forever. But they can’t. “Humans have to function in society,” I tell you. “We have to go to work and school. It’s important.” You ask, “Why? I don’t want to go to school.” And I have no good answer, only the weight of responsibility pressing into my spine.

A Commitment Ceremony:

Someone once told me I have an aversion to authority. Have you ever had someone say something about you that shook your core? It’s unsettling. I asked, “What authority? I follow the rules. I’m a good person.” The reply: “Time.”

On mornings when we have time to linger, you listen to my heart. I can’t hear it myself—I rarely think about my organs. But you drum along to a rhythm I can’t perceive. It doesn’t matter whether it’s accurate. What matters is your understanding of me, even when my own understanding falters.

For you, I muster the strength to keep going. And I promise, our love will continue for us both. This energy will endure, in whatever form it has to take. This is my commitment ceremony. It is a dedication that goes beyond what I can understand. I can only feel its existence.

Thanks for being here. Love, Carissa