On April 7th, 2002, I lost my best friend, my big sister, to cancer (Ewings Sarcoma-at age 19, I was 18 and she passed the month before I graduated high school).

In finding solitude after this loss, there was a stark contrast between past complete fullness and embodiment of family and the present emptiness after she was gone.

There was a deafening silence where laughter once was, feeling physically disoriented (like the world is tilted), and experiencing a profound internal silence where even my own voice felt alien; it was a quiet ache of an absent presence, the world continuing on a different Earth, and an existential loneliness of losing not just my sister, Mandi, but a part of my own reflection.

Every day after she left this Earth, I felt suspended in time, and the paradox of love became a quiet, internal anchor. I re-evaluated myself, my personality, my hopes, my dreams, my desires. I reflected for days, as I could not find the strength to leave my bedroom which I shared next to hers.

My entire personhood changed. I became a softer, more sympathetic, empathetic, and caring person. I saw every human being as a brother or sister with which I cared deeply for.

Taking on the feelings of others can be exhausting, but I wouldn't change the person I have become. I am who I am because of the solitude that came with the loss of the beautiful soul of my sister, Mandi.

I stayed back from moving on to college in South Carolina and helped my father run his restaurant when everyone else in my family had left. I grew closer to my father, which was something I craved since I was a small child. Solitude brings reflection and reflection breeds growth.

This growth was beautiful and I wouldn't change the plan that played out. It was written in the universe.