shush.

“I can’t sleep. It’s 10 o’clock and I can hear my parents fighting downstairs. I tried everything, I covered my face with a pillow, closed my door, put earplugs in… but nothing helped. Over everything else, I could still hear them bickering, their raised voices cutting through our paper-thin walls like a knife. 

Every sharp word that pierces the air, every sentence meant to tear the other down seems to slip deep into my skin like the briars I used to get walking through the woods with my dad at our old house. I sit back in my bed, and as I write this, try and think of the last time we were a happy family, the last time I could go to bed without hearing them fighting...

 I suppose it all started when we moved. 

I remember that day that my father came home, the same defeated look that he always wore. In his arms, he carried a box of stuff and in his eyes, he carried pain and sorrow. I never did ask what happened that day, though I suppose I was ‘too young to understand’. 

Mom was upstairs preparing for her night shift at the hospital where she was a nurse. I was downstairs playing with my barbies. When he came in I looked up and he gave me the same melancholy smile that he always did. 

I remember my mother trodding down the stairs ready to leave, looking at him, her mouth hardened into a firm line and she said nothing to him as she came over and gave me a kiss before walking over to the door, opened it and left without acknowledging my father. He sighed, ran his weary hands through his thinning hair and walked over to the table and put his stuff down. 

He looked at me and said “I love you muffin” and then he walked upstairs and didn’t come back stairs at all that night. It was a couple of months before we got evicted. I spent all of those days watching my dad coming home from job interview after job interview looking more and more dejected each time. Even though I was only 5, I could understand that my mom’s small wages at the hospital weren’t enough to keep our nice two-story house. 

From that house, we bounced from place to place with my dad’s work until we landed in this two-bedroom dump of an apartment. The fighting started the day we moved and still hasn’t stopped.”

“It’s 11 o’clock and they’re still at it. They don’t know that I can hear them. Just 5 minutes ago I went to go get a glass of water from the kitchen and when they saw me they immediately stopped my mother and father standing on opposite sides of the counter red-faced and out of breath from all the yelling. Thinking naively that I couldn’t hear them. As soon as I shut the door back into my room, they start up again. 

It’s only 11:30 when I hear the breaking of glass and then a door slamming.  It startles me and I don’t even want to know which one of them left this time. Well, at least now I can finally get to sleep. 

I was wrong. It’s now midnight and the eerie silence disturbs me more than the yelling ever could. I sat in my bed for a while thinking about my new school and the homework I was supposed to have done. 

I have been in 9 different schools in the past 5 years. I used to try to make friends but after the 3rd school, I learned that it was easier to just go to school and come home, not care about the work or the people because, as odds are we would move soon anyway. I don’t know the last time that I was invited to someone’s house or had someone over. Actually… wait, I do remember why I stopped inviting people over. 

Let me paint the picture, it was my 8th birthday party and we were living in Illinois at the time. We had been living there for 7 months (a record at that time). I had invited over 4 girls from school, my mom had covered our shabby apartment in dollar store birthday decorations and made me a boxed cake with canned frosting. 

Most people would say that it was cheap or tacky, but to me it was perfect. We were all having an awesome time and we were just about to open my presents when my dad burst through the front door. He was carrying his briefcase and he was undoubtedly, drunk. As he stumbled into the kitchen, all the other girls stared.

My mom looked at him, smiled at us and then led him into the kitchen telling us to go ahead and start opening presents without them.  I started opening all the things everyone had brought. It took 5 minutes for the whisper yells to come through the wall. Everyone looked up and listened to my mother chewing out my father for coming home drunk. 

 I was confused at first, then embarrassed. These were all girls who had a normal mommy and daddy who didn’t fight.  These people had a conventional family.  

I tried to ignore them, but soon they started screaming at each other, I took the other girls upstairs to try and ignore them.  Soon enough the other parents arrived and I saw the looks on their faces, and I knew that as soon as they got in the car they would tell their parents about what happened. 

So that, is why I will never EVER have friends over again. 

It’s now 1 in the morning and I will never be able to sleep. Oh, $#!% I forgot that I  have a huge final hat I am taking in English. Well, I was never good at English anyway. 

I was never good at school… or sports. Moving so often means I could never commit to a sport or a club, and moving to different schools meant different curriculums, so I was never really an A+ student. 

It’’s two o’clock and I kind of feel tired, but not really.  I am so mad, I was just about to go to sleep when it started raining, which would be fine on its own but whenever it started raining the dog that our upstairs neighbors are not supposed to have starts howling. I know I said that the walls were thin, but that’s nothing compared to how the thin the floors are. I mean, they’re still sturdy, but I think they were built with hollow wood. YOU HEAR EVERYTHING!

 I can’t go to slee-"