I Liked My Life

by Abby Fabiaschi

“Whenever we were around parents who had black-and-white goals for their children, your mother felt sorry for the whole family—the parents because they’d be perpetually disappointed, and the kids because they’d always feel nothing was good enough. She believed there was nothing worse a parent could pass on to a child than guilt.”

Reading the day from her point of view I see she was a punching bag and my dad and I gave her a daily workout. I’m starting to wonder why she didn’t jump sooner. I’m never getting married or having kids. We suck.

“Well … it’d be arrogant not to question what I did to contribute. Mostly I’m mad at her. I think, She did this to me. She left us. She had no right to do something that radical without informing me something was wrong in the first place.”

I proposed to the woman Maddy was in that exact moment. I married a phase and she did too. We changed. We adjusted to each other’s changes. Those tweaks sparked further change and so on, to the point where it’s impossible to unravel who I was before Maddy,

said that nothing will ever make sense again, but we still need to seek goodness wherever we go.

you don’t realize it until it’s too late. Maddy, Eve, my mother—the carousel of women I’ve disappointed. It’s as if I’m running because they’re chasing me.