Hereditary.

Note: this story contains mentions of rape, suicide and murder (none explicit).

I sit alone every night.

No sounds. At all.

I try to breathe as lightly as I can so I don't make too much noise. The last thing I want is to disturb his silence.

A few years ago Mom told me how they met. They saw each other at a bar in their hometown and since it was quite loud they decided to go for a walk to get to know eachother better. Clichê. I wonder if she had never seen serial killer documentaries. "Do not talk to strangers", you might end up dead. Or in love.

Mom says that when their eyes locked, the world became silent. And I guess it really did, but it might not have been a sharp silence like this one. I like to think that it was sweet and warm so I do not have to process how Mom could ever fall for someone so cold. She is sunlight and a fresh breeze and she is the personification of home. She, always filling the room with her harmonic loudness and funny laugh and sometimes many harsh opinions that were impossible to be changed, is the farest thing from silence I have ever met.

Now I watch her eyebags and tired shoulders bending over her plate while we sit at the table competing to see who is able to keep their eyes down for longer.

This living room that is told to have been filled with good and welcoming sounds has now become a waiting room.

Waiting for him to leave, for the chance to speak, for a life of warmth, for the courage to finally get up and do something about it.

But none of it ever comes.

Even when he goes to lay down his repressive presence fills up the room suffocating my lungs and making my throat and nostrils burn with fear and guilt.

So I remain silent.

My thoughts and opinions echo inside of me and revibrate and keep repeating themselves but are never brave enough to come out. I wonder if my mom feels the same way.

I used to get mad at her for not having the courage to leave, but I am starting to understand her a little bit more every time he hits us with the sharpest and most pain causing look in his eyes when we try to vocalize anything. He shows no mercy or compassion. Why would you do so to something so irrelevant and small and insignificant?

I know now that sometimes you get tired of fighting. The opposition that leads nowhere becomes less harmful than the constant repression, pushing you down into a void and circle of silence you simply can not escape. Also, it is quite hard to give up on a life with the person you fell in love with. The one you married, the one who sat there and watched emotionally as you birthed a life, showing his slightest compassion and single tear as you were spreading yourself open and ripping what was once told to be the purest thing you had so you could raise someone who will do the same thing at least 30 years later if you are “blessed” enough.

Or maybe not. Your legacy could be discontinued. Your children could choose not to have kids. They could be killed in an alley screaming for you in silence as they watch their life flash through their eyes as a blur of memories and sensations. They could be raped by a man as old as their father and feel so disgusted about their existence they choose not to continue it.

You never know.

So I guess this is why mom stayed with him. His silence had become her support. He could not voice an “I love you” to the human she birthed, but if the time came, he would stand there with her as she cried and screamed because her baby passed away. Not shedding a tear. Letting her feel for both: the guilt, the sadness and the emptiness she will feel in her womb and heart eternally.

As I grow up more and more everyday, I get it.

I am a woman. So is my mom. And so was her mom’s mom. We care for others deeply. We balance the men’s anger with our careful words and a gentle silence that keeps us alive and distract their minds with thoughts of superiority. We gift them our bodies and we learn to be flexible. Sometimes to make him satisfied and sometimes to dodge the bottle he “did not mean to throw at you”, because this is what you plan to tell your sister when she sees the scratch in your cheek. Accident after accident and lie after lie you get more comfortable enduring the silence, because your ears are tired of the screams. They are not as sensitive anymore. You are not as sensitive anymore.

Now, I sit alone in silence.

Like I did yesterday.

Like I will do tomorrow.

Like my mom and like a whole generation of women have done before and will do after me, because no matter how much you fight and how hard you are, there's nothing you can do when your enemy is God, for choosing this to be your fate, and your Dad, for being the man he learnt to be. The only man he knows how to be.

This silent retreat I was forced to join the moment I screamed gasping for air as I was taken out of what I knew to be home, warm and wet and lovely, is the most stable form of life I get to know. The silence is my only certainty because I know that it will be at the breakfast table tomorrow, I know it will find its way to me when I am far away from home and I know it will fog up on top of his grave, tying itself to him because it is the only thing he knows, and it is the only thing that will be stupid enough to follow him after being finally set free.