Please let me wake up. Please let it be a dream.

But it wasn’t a dream. Dad was gone. So many times over the past two decades I’d prepared for it—expected it really, just as anyone would when dealing with a severe alcoholic.

But why now? Why when he’d been sober for over three years? Why when we’d finally built a real relationship again? Why, when he’d now proved one of my most trusted advisers at the other end of no less than two hours’ worth of phone calls a day? And above all else, why when everything else in my life seemed perfectly on track?

Eight months later, the buzz and whirr of the MRI machine overwhelmed me, the sheet of heavy plastic sheet over my waist, meant for protection, causing additional stress on my strained muscles. A simple knee injury became two bad knees, then grew into a sciatic nerve condition that left me uncomfortable in any position. Would this next round of tests and treatment offer a solution? Would the pain ever go away?  Why this? Why now? Why the same year…?

Grief, fear, sorrow, desperation… and then, understanding. For it was only in the midst of these overwhelming questions that I finally learned to stop searching for answers.

Only in my darkest hour could I finally become: A Girl Enlightened.

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