I walked every morning.

I went to every doctor’s appointment I had spent my whole life avoiding, because my body was no longer only mine; it was the sole roof over a child’s head, and I could not afford for it to fail.

It is a particular kind of love, and a particular kind of pressure, to be the only thing standing between a child and the void, to know that there is no backup, no second parent, no one waiting in the wings if you falter.

I carried that every day.