It’s incredible how quickly everything changes in this house hold… One second, I’m totally pepped up for the upcoming week. Be-cause, well, let’s face it, I’m a genuinely optimistic person, and be-cause next week holds so much promise. But everything’s a shade of gray in this house, where no one really knows where anyone else stands on any issue one way or another. And everyone is indecisive about their feelings and emotions and can’t keep a set mood for more than ten minutes… It’s a terrible, twisted, confusing, surreal way to live, and I truly hate it. Being unsure all of the time, not knowing who to trust or who to be-lieve or what to say…and what to keep hidden. The lines and boundaries of everything are foggy and blurred, and you can’t be sure if what you see is what you get… In fact, that’s the only thing you can be sure of… That you can’t, in fact, be sure of anything.
And it breaks my heart. That these people I supposedly “care about” and “love like no other”, make my head spin and my heart beat fast like this. And not in the fluttery, perfection-of-the-moment sense, in the way where I want to tear it out be-cause it’s pounding up and against my chest and making everything hurt and feel wrong and out of place…
And I feel like I should be over this by now. I should expect it, and just deal with it… But it gets me, EVERY time. And I don’t know what to do about it. I just get quiet and walk on tip toes, but they yell at that too. They say that everything I do is wrong, and everything I am is incorrect. But the worst part, goddammit, the worst part? Is when they say what I be-lieve in is wrong.
Which gets to me. It hurts. They tell me how foolish I am. And I feel it now too. I feel like my motto in life, my purpose, no longer has a place here. They say that I’m selfish. And I say I just want to help people. And she laughs, and he musters a huff. And I feel small, and helpless, and want to get away be-fore things get worse. Be-cause the cut on my face still hurts, and it re-minds me of how things get if I’m not careful.
So I nod and “mhmm” my way out of it. But they’re persistent. And eventually all of the words I utter feel empty and useless so I just stop. Things get messy be-tween me and him but I extinguish the flames by backing out and away. By closing my mouth and biting down the words that burn my tongue.
And I want to-morrow to be good. Be-cause, well, thanks to a lot of factors, it should be an amazing week. Some fun trips, seeing my babies at the camp, that cute new guy I’m taking an interest in, me and my best friend hanging out for days on end… Everything should be looking up. But then I re-member where I come from and the future looks bleak, like an unfurling canvas of dark that swallows you whole.
And then spits you out be-cause you taste bitter…
But then where are you?
When you catch your breath and look around… where the hell are you?





