I’ve always been my mothers protector. I learned to diffuse fights like bombs, ten years old holding my breath and listening through thin walls for the first sounds of broken glass or the sting of a hand across skin. I learned hostage negotiation. How to stop someone from taking the final step off of the ledge, coaxing them down to reality in just enough time to stop the night from ending in red. I learned how to read him like a book, knew exactly what pitch his voice would take before he started spitting fire through his clenched teeth. I learned how to clean up blood in the hallway. And living room. And kitchen. Bathroom and stairs. I learned how to follow a bread trail of my mothers pain painted across the house in rust. I learned how to clean wounds that weren’t mine, some nights I was more paramedic than daughter. More police officer than child. My house has always been a battlefield and for some reason I’ve always stationed myself at the front line. I learned to put out fires before there were flames. Closing windows to stop oxygen from letting it grow, a fire hose hidden beneath my tongue. Silence makes me uneasy. Silence is the beginning of the end because it only lasts for so long. The world is unforgiving and loud about it. The only thing silence brings is ringing in my ears and a noose made of hands around her neck. Over the years I’ve learned to be my mothers therapist. I listen to her as she cries and I pet her head and I tell her that she deserves better. I try to calm my shaking hands as I clean up her broken body, ignoring yellowing bruises on her tear streaked cheeks. I never learned how to be a kid, or a teenager and sometimes I’m furious about having no memories of being a child but so many of being terrified. People always ask how I could be so tired when all I do is work a part time job. But keeping my mother alive has been a full time job since I was old enough to form memories and my boss is an *** and I don’t get days off. I’ve worked double time on every holiday without complaint and even though in some ways I know I should quit I don’t know how to. I was born for the job, nobody else can do it as well as me. I don’t want anyone to replace me in my spot because what if they can’t fill the shoes I left behind.