2026-07-24

Yesterday I received a popup saying, "Anna came back to Duolingo to learn Chinese (Simplified) after 1 year!", asking if I wanted to send her congratulations. You can imagine how much of a shock that was, considering she'd been dead for five years. I'd kept her as a friend on Duolingo, but that notification convinced me to block the account, in case it'd been compromised.

Of course that got me thinking about her, which meant I spent some time looking through her old Instagram posts. Whenever I miss her (or feel her missing-from-me), there's a bit of my mind that reminds me that it's this concept of her I've built up that I'm missing, not the actual person she was in relation to me. Looking through those posts reminded me of exactly how that was. It is a known fact that people put only a curation of themselves on social media. In doing that, she pared herself down to the parts that, in her depression, tried so hard to be thankful for all the love that she had. It is a fact that she tried. I know this.

It is also a fact that most of her trying was not directed at me. I was not a recipient of these efforts. I do not blame her for this. Yet, I find myself in the strange position of being envious of her friends, who can miss her without reserve, without the small voice reminding them of what living with her was actually like. For the past five years, I've treated the reminder as if it was harmful; I thought it was encouraging me to dissociate from my sadness ("There's no need for you to be sad, your sadness is for an image of her you constructed, not your real experience of being with her"). So I kept telling that part of me that it was alright to miss my sister, that I should just let myself feel.

Today I let myself sit with the other side instead. I knew a part of what this other side held. It starts with resentment. The 12-year-old me who hated being bothered by her siblings, whose mom insisted "you'll see it's better to have siblings when you grow up; you'll like each other more and you'll have support!", who didn't believe her mom but who held onto those words like a promise. This 12-year-old was angry that her sister killed herself before she ever got to the "good part". She was angrier that not only did she not receive this support, she ended up being the one to support everyone else in the family in the immediate aftermath. It was this 12-year-old who felt childish for holding onto a promise that was never her mom's to make, and felt selfish for wanting something—for expecting more—of a person already deeply depressed. So I sat with that 12-year-old, sat with her resentment and unease.

I watched as the unease grew into a familiar shape. One of walking tightropes around my sister, trying to sense if she was in the mood for conversation... what kind of conversation? Of my mom coming to me as a teenager, telling me she didn't understand my sister's depression and that maybe I did, because I understood her better, that I should talk to her. And say what? Of her ex's mom who wanted to speak to me because she was showing signs of suicidal ideation and she was concerned. Of always reading, reading, reading the fucking room. Speak and be rebuffed with silence. Speak and hope it changes something. Speak and hope all the adults in the room stop depending on me to change something. I'm sorry I can't help you. I'm also just a kid.