Strong

There is one word that many have used to describe me, and that word is strong. My family, friends and class mates all agree that I am the strongest person that they know. I recall the first time I heard someone call me strong. It was my cousin Mckensie, she lived half way across the country from me, and she was the one person I felt I could always talk too. I had called her a couple nights after I got the dreaded message from my older sister saying that my dad had died. I hadn't dealt with the situation and I found myself sobbing to her over the phone. I expressed to my cousin my feelings and then sat there in silence. We were both considerably young and asking each other for advice at that age on a subject such as death was practically impossible. The silence seemed like forever while I waited for advice from my cousin who had no expirience or knowlege on anything related to death.
Finally, she found something to say to me. She said,
"Kacee, You are so strong. I don't know how you do it." I remember sitting there confused. I called her crying and miserable and she was calling me strong. She explained to me a memory that she recalled from a couple years before. My mom decided to move me to Alaska to get away from my abusive dad, and we kept it a secret from him until the night we were leaving. I remember my dad bending down to hug me while he sobbed into my little shoulder. I didn't understand why we had to leave. I was young and at the time my dad was my hero. My cousin was there watching that night and she expressed to me through the phone that she didn't know how I did it. In her eyes I was strong.
I got off the phone feeling better. I was strong. I fed off of that thought. Almost instantly that is who I became. I was the strong one. I stood infront of my dad's casket and I didn't cry. I held my mother and my sisters, and I kept my composure. I sang at his funeral standing between my two older sisters who were sobbing and I picked up the lyrics that they couldn't sing becaues they were crying too hard. I held it all in because I was strong even though every ounce of me was completely falling apart.
I guess you can say this describes my life after my dad died. I keep my room overly clean, I have all my school work organized into folders, and I have my shit together. What I say is grammatically correct, and my answers always make sense. People come to me when they want the truth, not friendship. They know they will get honesty from me whether they want it or not. I had a 4.0 gpa, and I had became the star of the track team. Everything in my life was in check. Well, everything on the outside at least. Strength became my mask. It became what I used to disguise the world what I was feeling inside. I never dealt with death or grief I just ignored it. I used my perfect grades and answers to hide what was really going on inside.
There is no word I despise right now more then the word strong. I always thought strong meant holding it all together and being the foundation for everyone to walk on. I thought it meant fixing everyone's lives and being there to patch things up for everyone else, but I was wrong. I later learned that being strong was the worst thing that could happen to me. Sometimes being strong means being able to cry because that means moving on, but I never did that. I still haven't been able to cry or move on, and I think that's what is scaring my loved ones the most. I am no longer being strong. Infact I am doing just the opposite, I am completely falling apart.