My aunt.

Had meningitis at an early age. She's disabled. She's got the mental age of a young person, about ten. She's in bed most of the time.

My Dad grew up with her and I sometimes wonder if he sees me as her. I know that I look like her. I catch it sometimes, in my dark eyebrows or the way my nostrils are. I'd be her, if she'd been healthy. I'm not pretty, but I am... I make people want to look again, I think. If she'd been healthy, she could have been like me instead of making people look again because of the way she is. Maybe Dad would have had someone to share secrets with and play with and bounce off, like I do with my brother and sister. Someone to compete with on even ground.

My Grandma spent a lot of time looking after her and not much on looking after my Dad, who was bright.

So I suppose in teaching me he's teaching her, and teaching himself. I'm what he could have been. I'm what she could have been.

These feel like horrible things to say but they're the truth. Here's another one. She might come over for christmas, and I don't want her to. I don't want her to be laid out on a sofa bed drinking coffee through a straw whilst we eat a roast. I won't be able to. I don't want to have to make forced happy conversation.

I think she might come and I don't want her to.

I feel horrible. I know how much she would enjoy it, and it's one day, a few hours, of my whole year. Christmas doesn't mean that much to me. I don't want a perfect christmas. I don't want presents, so it's not as if I'm sacrificing something massive.

I know noone wants her to come. But we should have her.

It's just that the things I like about christmas- the mince pie making, the dinner, the walk after (which might not happen because she'll not be able to go on it) are all dimmed by the prospect of this occasion.

I want to go and help in a shelter on christmas day. Granted, she will be there. But how is it that I am quite happy to share a shelter with twelve people, all homeless and nontheless resilient, but not one relative, who loves me and who loves my father, and who deserves a good christmas at least once instead of the dull, semi-heated and fatty conversation, or food, doled out at her Home (with a capital H, it's a house, not a home) this year.

It might be her last.

Why can't I do it with a spirit of being happy? Of making the best. Why can't life be like a children's book, where the disabled person turns out to have so many amazing qualities and it's sad and happy instead of just sad?

Why am I so selfish? If my Dad, who has sacrificed so many years to her, can do this, then so can I.