Doors slam like Satan himself is in a fit of rage below us, even if he is in the deepest level of Hell, I feel the floor shaking like a 6.0 has just swept us but it is only a consequence of wood slamming against wood and fists fighting doorknobs.
Voices rise like the temperature in Arizona in the summer, abruptly, hot and heavy, so quickly stifling any chance of reliefβ anger is an emotion I am far too familiar with.
Some people live quiet family lives, are never interrupted in their sleep by screams from a father who dreams of death and a mother who carries a scythe of shame as if she is the Reaper, some people wake up in the morning knowing there is breakfast waiting on the table, fresh eggs hot off the stove and orange juice with pulp, but others wake up and make coffee for themselves, knowing parents sleep past noon and we are the ones who are doomed to repeat the history of abuse and psychological suffering but: we are the ones who will help to stifle the shouts, to put a stop to slamming doors and shrill screams, dysfunctional daily routines and waiting for hope that never arrives, we have had lives consisting of always having to act stronger than we feel when the floorboards seem to be breaking just beneath the force of our feet, because our bodies are not just our bodies, we are carrying burdens that weigh more than our bones and blood cells combined, so when we step on the scale the number we're reading is really how much hurt we have been holding, not how much food we've been hoarding inside of us.
We are the children of complex family situations, we are spend-more-time-in-psychologist-offices-than we-do-in-our-own-rooms, we are no-parent-to-tuck us-in-at-night-read-yourself-a-story-it-builds-ability. We are daydreams of escaping like Rapunzel, we are how do I save myself from a nightmare when I am already awake? We are years of reading self-help books in Barnes and Noble until we finally understood that the only thing to do is to help the world help us: we are strong. And we understand that family exists, but for us it is different. We are the children who find comfort in books and coffee and anything outside of a house so filled with tension and hatred, and we have been waiting to fix ourselves for too long.