Last week, my sister did something I had waited 15 years to witness.

After 21 years, she finally quit her job.

She is four years younger than me. I’ve always been the risk-taker; she’s always preferred security.

We grew up in the same family but took very different paths. I left home for boarding high school, went to college in another city, and three years after graduation, left China for the United States. My sister stayed close to home.

I’ve always been a rebel, refusing to follow the path my parents carefully mapped out for me. They wanted me to work for the same company they worked for and marry a highly educated, reliable man—preferably one wearing glasses. In my parents’ eyes, the thicker the glasses, the better educated the man—and therefore, the more secure my life would be.

My sister followed the plan. She took the job my father arranged for her and married someone she met at the company. She might have lived the same secure life my parents did—until I talked her into coming to America to see the world.

Her landing in America was much softer than mine. She didn’t have to waitress and walk home in the snow at midnight like I did. She didn’t have to stay awake all night worrying about how she would pay rent, nor did she have to settle for a crummy apartment. My parents gave her money, and she stayed at my home.

A few years later, I helped her find an internship that led to the company she worked at for the past 21 years. Even after I dragged her halfway around the world, my security-loving sister somehow managed to find security again.

And she probably would have stayed there until retirement. Except something began to change about seven years ago.

Every afternoon, she became so exhausted that she fell asleep at six o’clock. Two hours later, she would wake up, cook dinner, and open her laptop again until two in the morning. At six that same morning, she started all over.

Dinner was sometimes served at 10 p.m. She and her husband argued, and frustration from work followed her home, spreading through the family.

She was miserable. She interviewed with another company, but received no offer.

“People can smell your frustration from ten miles away,” I told her. “Who wants to hire that person? You have to quit your job first. Clear your mind so you can see and receive other opportunities.”

I kept telling her that for years, but she wouldn’t do it. Security was too important.

Then, last week, something changed and she finally did it. She quit.

“Maybe I’ll look for another job after I rest for a month,” she told me.

I smiled. She doesn’t know it yet, but I have a feeling that once she tastes freedom, she may not want that old life back.

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I know something about that. Fourteen years ago, I quit my corporate finance job to spend more time with my son. I ventured into real estate. I flipped houses. I lost money. I lost homes to foreclosure.

There were times when I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I missed the security. I regretted leaving.

Then I started over. Little by little, I climbed out of the financial debris and built my property management business. Today, my business gives me something my corporate job never could: security and freedom.

For most of our lives, my sister and I stood on opposite sides. I chose risk; she chose security. Neither of us was wrong. We simply needed different things at different times in our lives.

When we are young, we build security. Later, we begin to crave freedom and adventure—a chance to find out who we are when we’re no longer living according to somebody else’s plan.

My sister thinks she’s taking a month off. I think she may be standing at the beginning of something much larger.

She spent 21 years building a secure life. Now she gets to find out what freedom feels like.

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Some days I wonder what happened to the woman who used to dream so fearlessly.

I am 57 years old.

Thirty-one years ago, I left the comfort of my home and career in China to pursue the American Dream.

Today I clean the urine leaking from my ex-husband’s catheter bag. I call my 85-year-old mother in China, quietly biting my tongue as she complains about her aches and pains from Parkinson’s. I FaceTime my 25-year-old son to let him know his mom is still cheering him on.

I am out and about all day checking on rental homes I manage, meeting clients and their expectations, cajoling anxious vendors, and interviewing potential applicants.

By day’s end I am a basket case.

My second shift starts the moment I get home: cooking dinner, preparing meals for the next day, cleaning, putting my ex to bed, and finishing paperwork for my business.

My home looks like a cross between an assisted living facility and an infirmary because of his Alzheimer’s.

Five short years ago, Mike was an active 75-year-old who could carry on conversations, drive, and live independently. Today, he stops in the kitchen and opens every drawer looking for silverware. He can’t remember what happened thirty seconds ago. He can no longer hold a conversation, struggling to find the simplest words.

Sometimes he holds his shirt upside down and stares at it, no longer knowing how to dress himself.

I look into his eyes and watch the spark of kindness and intelligence slowly fade. I reach out to him only to find him retreating further and further away.

Alzheimer’s doesn’t steal Mike all at once. It creeps. It seeps. It eats. It chips away.

Small pieces disappear, one at a time.

And I am losing one small piece at a time too.

Was it a mistake for me to take him in five years ago?

Five years before that, he wanted to retire and I didn’t. After the divorce, I built a successful company with my bare hands. When I found out he was stumbling on his own in Arizona, I invited him back to San Diego to live in the new home I had purchased so he could spend more time with his son.

Now I feel trapped.

Some days I want to scream. Other days I want to run.

I feel suffocated by this obligation.

And then the guilt arrives.

What kind of person even thinks that?

That’s why I started to write.

The young woman who crossed the Pacific Ocean in search of the American Dream thirty-one years ago is still there. She may be covered in dust and long forgotten, but she has been walking beside me all these years—silently, firmly, and patiently waiting for me to find her again.

I imagine a day will come when I look back on this experience with a degree of pride.

But today is not that day.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.

But I do know this:

I don’t want Alzheimer’s to take away two lives.

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