It’s my graduation, and she’s sitting on the couch farthest away from me. I try not to look over at her, just so she won’t see that what she’s doing is affecting me. I don’t want her to think that she’s winning.

I stuff more crazy bread into my mouth so I can barely chew. I get marinara sauce on my white dress, and it stains it, but not as much as watching her talk to my boyfriend does. It stings. It feels like her voice gets louder when she talks to him, even if it’s the same volume.

I know today is supposed to be about me, but it feels like it’s about her. I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about her, but I can’t. She’s got a MSU sweatshirt on, but it’s not for the occasion. It’s the same one she always wears, like this is some ordinary get together.

I look at the white dress I’m wearing, and find myself pulling at the end of it trying to make it longer than it is designed to be; and forgetting about the red stain. Last time I had a stain, I had to get rid of immediately. I washed it with hand soap and then ripped a hole in it after using a hair dryer on the hottest level to dry it as fast as possible. This time, somehow the red spot seems less urgent.

I can see her eyes drifting over, and it makes me flashback to the last time I was at her house. My friend and I were getting ready to leave there to go to a concert that night, and she looked at both of us and said, “You guys are really going looking like that? Oh my god!”

My mom came in to defend me before I could even respond. It was when I saw my own friend looking at her own body differently that I felt really bad. For the first time, I wanted my aunt to target me. I wanted her to pick on me just so my friend wouldn’t have to feel judged by her. “That’s how they all dress nowadays,” my mom said, trying to lighten the mood. Thankfully the conversation moved on.

“Yeah, pretty much,” my friend had said. I remember being so impressed by her confidence to stand up for herself, something I was still working on.

My mind went to another time when I was sitting on her brown couch in her big living room, watching commercials up on the TV. I was showing everyone pictures of me and my friends, and I showed her the blurry photo of us at one of the bars. I was laughing, about to tell her about the fun we had, and all she did was point at my pink corset top. She turned the confidence I felt in it that night into shame. It was my senior bar crawl, my last time at an East Lansing bar with my friends. She told me it was slutty, and I didn’t know what to say. I was searching for words and none were coming out. My grandma defended me that time, though I couldn’t remember what she said. But my aunt ruined the photo for me. I stopped looking at it. The corset top stayed in my closet for a long time before I got the courage to wear it again, somehow getting closer and closer to the bottom of the drawer each time I went to look for an outfit.

Then I escaped to a better memory, a good one. She was talking about her college days and about how drunk she got with her and her many friends. And when I showed her the scar on my finger and told her the story behind it, she laughed. It was the first time I realized that the only way for her not to shame me was if it was something she’d done too. I felt so good that day, like she cared about me, when it turned out she only wanted to tell me that story of her. She was teaching me about college, and in a way, got to relive the college days she wanted back, and I didn’t even know at the time how much it was about her. She was going on about how, “I’m the cool aunt, aren’t I? You tell me things you don’t want to tell your mom, and I’ll keep your secret for you.” She winked. She went on and on about the tailgates she would do and all of that, and right after I told her the story about how I drank too much and fell into a table, she didn’t even ask more about it. She rebounded right with another story of hers. At the time though, it was a great memory. I didn’t want to ever take away the happiness I felt in that one car ride.

When I was practicing before taking my driver’s test, she let me drive with her, and she told me I was better than my cousin. She told me I wasn’t that bad. And the happiness I felt in that moment was taken away the other three times she would go on and on about how bad of a driver I was at dinners. Like when I started training to drive a van for work, she shook her head and said, “Oh no.” It was like she took back the happiness I felt, and I hated her for it.

In therapy, I talked to my therapist about it. About the stabs she would take at me. How I would start crying in the middle of card games. And she told me to be neutral, to respond neutrally to her.

It worked. Sometimes.

The more I thought about her, the more I tried to understand her. I wondered if the reason she took my happiness away was because she needed to steal some of her own.

At first, I thought it was me because it felt like it was just me she went after, but after it turned into her being mad at my mom, my grandma, my cousin, my sister, I started to realize maybe it wasn’t me.

I don’t even know what she’s mad at. Still. She got mad at my sister because she said she didn’t like her sheet cake. She won’t talk to any of us, calls us ungrateful. And at first, I took it personal, I asked myself what I should’ve done better. I say thank you, I send her birthday texts, I always give her a Christmas present; how am I ungrateful?

After graduation, we had a birthday party for my cousin, and my cousin had to go to her place after ours. And it took everything in me not to tell my cousin the body shaming comments she’d said about her behind her back. It took everything in me not to say it, but I didn’t say it because I didn’t want her to have to feel what I’ve had to. I couldn’t be the one to take her happy moments with her away.

But all of mine are continuing to be taken away, and now there’s none left. I’m at my own celebration, and all I want is her to care about me like I do her. Even after all she’s said, even after her saying that she’d grieve her dog more than my grandpa, after the first real loss of my life, I still feel bad for her. The times she’s yelled at me. I still want her to like me. I want her to take back all the comments so I can forgive her. I want her to say the magic words and care for once.

But I won’t ever get that. She won’t be at my wedding. She won’t be at my first signing as a published author.

And as much as I want to hate her like she does my family, I’ll never be able to match her hate. Because I’ll always care, even if she doesn’t.

I pick a playlist of memories to remember her by, and the first one I choose is the one where she told me one day I’d be an amazing writer. She told me that. On one of her good days, she was interested in what I was writing and it made me feel good. I could rewrite it and claim my happy back.

The second one was when we were getting ready for our Tennessee trip and at 6 am she got up, threw on some music I didn’t know, and started dancing all over. I loved seeing her in her element; I think it was the happiest I’ve ever seen her.

The last one is one from a long time ago. We were just kids and when we went in her car, she would play cool songs like the one about the fishes swimming and we would pretend to be waving our hands like fish.

Another one is when she would put red lipstick on my nose so I could be Rudolph and when she took me to get my nails done for my birthday.

There are a lot of things she’s bought me over the years, but the ones I choose to remember are the ones where we had good times together, ones that were more about the moments. I would discard the rest, but those parts of my aunt would always be in my life.

And I think that means I won.

​