"The weight of silence"

...

It was a mild winter night. The coldness hadn't yet seeped deep into the earth, but the wind had begun to whisper the warning of winter's arrival. The trees swayed softly, the leaves rustling like quiet echoes of a long-forgotten secret. I lay there, motionless in my bed, staring at the dark ceiling. Shifting from side to side, I tried to find comfort in my sheets, but my body felt like an empty shell-nothing could fill the ache.

Was it insomnia? Or was I simply drowning in my thoughts, spiraling into a pit I could never escape from? I couldn't say. The night stretched on endlessly, like an ocean I couldn't see the end of. It was as though I was stuck between two worlds-neither asleep nor awake, a prisoner of my own mind.

My eyes burned with exhaustion, yet sleep was nowhere to be found. I closed them tightly, squeezing them as if somehow that would stop the endless stream of thoughts that flooded my brain. But all I found was an abyss, black and infinite. I dozed off for a few moments, only to wake with a jolt, my heart racing for reasons I couldn't understand. My mind was a storm- thoughts clashing and colliding, incoherent and maddening. Was I dreaming? Or was this reality? It was all a blur.

Time slipped through my fingers like sand. Hours passed. And then it happened. Morning came, breaking through the haze of exhaustion, harsh and unrelenting.

"Wake up! It's past 10 a.m.!" My mother's voice sliced through the stillness, sharp and commanding.

I flinched at the sound, my heart sinking into my stomach. The words echoed in my ears, but I couldn't quite place why they terrified me so much. I rolled out of bed, my limbs heavy, as though I had been awake all night. The weariness clung to me, an oppressive weight that didn't belong to a single night's lack of sleep. No. This felt like something else. Something deeper, darker.

It was Sunday morning, the day meant for rest, but I felt anything but rested. The space around me felt unfamiliar-alien, even. The world was spinning, but I had no control. I had become a mere passenger in my own life, a broken puppet dangling from strings too frayed to hold me up.

I trudged downstairs, ate breakfast mechanically, but the taste of food was lost on me. My mother was already up, already busy with her endless tasks. I joined her, pulling clothes from the laundry basket, trying to help-but everything felt wrong. Her eyes pierced into me, searching for something I couldn't give. "What's the matter with you?" She hissed, her voice like nails on a chalkboard. "Why do you act like this? Why can't you be like your sister?"

I swallowed hard, my throat tightening. I wasn't good enough. I would never be good enough.

After the laundry was done, I retreated into my room, desperate for some quiet. But the moment I picked up a book-my solace, my escape-my father barged in.

"What are you doing?" His voice thundered, the anger in his words vibrating through the room. "Why are you reading that garbage? You should be studying!"

I froze, the book still in my hands, but I couldn't even find the words to respond. I nodded numbly, swallowing my humiliation. He didn't even wait for me to answer. He turned and left, the door slamming behind him with a finality that made my chest tighten. The sound echoed in my bones, like a bell tolling for something dead.

But my mother wasn't done.

She walked into my room, her footsteps heavy with anger, and before I could even blink, she snatched the book from my hands and threw it at me. The sharp thud of the spine hitting my forehead was nothing compared to the sting of her words.

"You're too young for this." She spat the words, her face twisted in disgust. "You're supposed to be studying, not wasting your time on these stupid stories!"

I was silent. I always was. I couldn't speak because the truth was too painful. Her disappointment in me was a silent weight I carried every day, and the guilt of it was suffocating.

Her fury only grew. Without warning, she grabbed a slipper and began hitting me. The blows were relentless, each one landing with a sharp crack that sent a jolt of pain through my body. "Worthless. Useless. Nothing but a burden." Each slap of the slipper reinforced her words, etching them deep into my skin. "You will never be enough for me."

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I couldn't. My body seemed to become numb to it all, the pain almost... comforting in its familiarity.

The last blow hit my shoulder with such force that I felt a sharp burst of pain, and I could almost hear the crack of my bones beneath the pressure. But it wasn't the physical pain that tore me apart-it was the cold, unfeeling hatred in her eyes as she watched me crumble.

When I dared to ask, "Why are you doing this?" her voice was ice cold.

"Because of you." She snarled, her eyes blazing. "Because of you, your father screams at me. It's your fault!"

The words stung more than the blows. The truth of it, the horrible reality that I was the cause of everything wrong, wrapped around my chest like a vice. "Everything is your fault," her words echoed in my mind, over and over, until they became my reality.

She continued to hit me, and I didn't fight back. My shoulder ached, and the pain spread like fire through my body, but it didn't stop. Her anger didn't cease. She hit me harder, each strike landing at the same spot. My shoulder went numb, and soon, the pain became too much to bear. But still, I remained silent.

I wished I could scream, could beg for mercy, but the words never came. My voice was trapped inside, buried under years of anger and regret. I was too weak to fight, too small to fight back. Her face twisted with fury, and I felt like the smallest, most insignificant thing in the world.

The silence between us was deafening. The only sound was the slap of the slipper against my skin, and my ragged breathing as I fought to keep my composure. I didn't want her to see me break. "I can't let her see me fall apart. I'll never let her see me weak." I repeated that over and over in my head, as if saying it could make it true.

Then, she stopped.

She threw the slipper at my face, her disgust for me more evident than ever.

"You're a disappointment." Her words cut deeper than any physical blow. "I wish you were someone else." Her voice cracked with the venom of years of frustration, and my heart shattered. "You're a failure."

I couldn't speak. I didn't have the strength to. I simply watched as she turned and left the room, her back stiff with fury, leaving me broken and shattered in her wake. Her words lingered in the air like a poison that seeped into every corner of my soul.

"You'll never be enough." Those words hung in the air, suffocating me with their weight. My heart ached, my chest tightening, as though I were suffocating in her rejection. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. But I couldn't. I felt weak, pathetic, and nothing in my life had ever felt so hollow. My body felt like it was made of glass, shattering with every move. I picked up the novel she had thrown at me, clutching it to my chest as if it could offer me some kind of comfort.

But there was no comfort to be found. Only emptiness.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I didn't eat dinner with the family. I stayed in my room, drowning in the suffocating silence. The guilt gnawed at me, digging deeper with each passing minute. Why was I like this? Why did I always seem to be the source of their anger?

By midnight, hunger gnawed at my insides, but the thought of facing them filled me with dread. So, I snuck into the kitchen, grabbed some fried rice, and ate it standing in the shadows, like a thief in my own home.

I returned to my room, trembling and broken, my heart pounding. It wasn't the hunger that drove me to eat-it was the need to fill the emptiness that had taken root inside me.

But no matter how much I ate, the hunger inside me remained.

I tried to sleep. I closed my eyes, but the pain didn't go away. My shoulder throbbed, my head ached, and my mind refused to shut down. I couldn't escape it. The thoughts-the doubts, the guilt-kept swirling around, consuming me.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. But I didn't.

Instead, I did the only thing that gave me relief..

I hurt myself.

My hand moved on its own, striking my bruised shoulder over and over again. The pain was sharp, immediate, and it drowned out everything else. It was the only way to silence the noise in my head, to ease the ache in my chest.

"I deserve this," I thought, each blow harder than the last. "I'm the reason they're unhappy. I'm the reason I'm worthless."

And so, it became a habit. Every time the sadness and guilt overwhelmed me, I found solace in the pain. It became my refuge.

But no matter how many times I struck myself, the emptiness never went away. It never would.

"I'll never be good enough. I'll never be loved." The words circled in my mind, over...

...The emptiness never went away. It never would. Every strike against my own flesh, every tear I swallowed, only left me more hollow. But still, I couldn't stop. The pain was the only thing that made me feel something-anything. It was a cruel cycle that spiraled tighter with every passing moment, pulling me further away from the person I used to be. If I couldn't escape the voices in my head, the guilt, the anger, then maybe... just maybe, I could escape everything else.

But nothing ever gave me the relief I desperately sought. My mind kept screaming at me, "You'll never be good enough. You'll never be loved." The words echoed through my brain, unrelenting, like a drumbeat that would never cease. "You're a failure. You're worthless."

And the worst part? The worst part was that I believed it. Every single word. "I am a failure." The thought seemed to consume me until my very identity dissolved. My mind wasn't my own anymore. It was their words, their voices, their anger, their rejection-all tangled together, suffocating me until I couldn't breathe.

I reached for the razor blade I had hidden in the drawer. My fingers trembled as I held it, the sharpness promising a release from the torment that had become my constant companion. I wanted it to stop. I wanted the thoughts to quiet down. Just for a moment, just long enough to escape this pain.

I pressed the blade into my skin, the cold metal biting into the surface, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I felt something. The pain was sharp, intense, but it was real. It was the only thing that made me feel alive. And as the blood began to drip, I didn't feel relief. I didn't feel better. I just felt more empty than ever before. The silence around me, once filled with voices and expectations, was now deafening in its emptiness.

But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. I had nothing left to give.

I glanced around the room-my sanctuary, my prison-and for a brief moment, I wished I could disappear. I wished the walls would swallow me whole, or that I could fall into a deep, endless sleep where nothing would ever hurt me again.

But that was the cruelest lie of all.

Sleep never came.

"I am nothing." The words clung to me, suffocating, as the tears spilled down my face.

I buried my face in my pillow, my body wracked with sobs that I couldn't control. But no matter how hard I cried, no matter how much I wanted it to stop, it only felt like I was sinking further into the darkness. "I'll never be enough."

I wanted to scream, but the scream died in my throat. I wanted to fight back, but I couldn't summon the strength. My mind, my body, my very soul were too broken to even attempt a fight. The hopelessness was suffocating.

"If only I were someone else... if only I didn't exist..." The thought flitted through my mind like a fleeting shadow, too dark to fully grasp, but I welcomed it. It was an escape. The only escape.

But before I could delve deeper into that twisted solace, I felt my body shaking uncontrollably. I couldn't tell if it was the cold or the terror, but something in me snapped. My breath came in ragged gasps, my chest tightening with a familiar pressure, one I had long since learned to fear. Panic clawed at me from the inside, the crushing weight of my own self-loathing closing in.

It felt like I was suffocating on my own existence.

"Why am I still here? Why am I still breathing?" I asked the empty room, my voice hoarse, barely a whisper.

I wanted to shout, to rage against everything that had made me this way, but the words were stuck inside me, like stones in my throat.

And for the first time in my life, I realized that the pain wasn't just physical. It wasn't just the bruises or the cuts. It was the desperate, gnawing emptiness that had settled deep inside me. It was the constant ache of not being enough. Of being trapped in a life where nothing would ever change.

The world outside may have been moving on, but I was stuck, forever frozen in a moment of hopelessness. Nothing I did could escape the grip of this pain. No matter how much I punished myself, no matter how much I cried, it never stopped. It only grew.

I let the razor fall from my hand, the blade clattering to the floor with an eerie finality.

"I don't know who I am anymore."

And in that moment, the world felt so unbearably, unbearably heavy. Like I was drowning beneath the weight of my own existence.

The cold winter wind howled outside my window, as if mocking me, taunting me with the harshness of the world I could never be a part of.

I closed my eyes, my body trembling, my chest constricting.

"Why am I still here? Why am I still breathing?" I asked the empty room, my voice hoarse, barely a whisper.

I wanted to shout, to rage against everything that had made me this way, but the words were stuck inside me, like stones in my throat.

And for the first time in my life, I realized that the pain wasn't just physical. It wasn't just the bruises or the cuts. It was the desperate, gnawing emptiness that had settled deep inside me. It was the constant ache of not being enough. Of being trapped in a life where nothing would ever change.

The world outside may have been moving on, but I was stuck, forever frozen in a moment of hopelessness. Nothing I did could escape the grip of this pain. No matter how much I punished myself, no matter how much I cried, it never stopped. It only grew.

I let the razor fall from my hand, the blade clattering to the floor with an eerie finality.

"I don't know who I am anymore."

And in that moment, the world felt so unbearably, unbearably heavy. Like I was drowning beneath the weight of my own existence.

The cold winter wind howled outside my window, as if mocking me, taunting me with the harshness of the world I could never be a part of.

I closed my eyes, my body trembling, my chest constricting.

I don't know when it happened-whether it was the darkness of the night or the numbing of my mind-but I finally let go of the fight. The pain, the sadness, the constant fear that I would never be loved, never be enough... it all blurred into one long, aching scream.

And as I drifted into the black void, the one that had called me for so long, I could only hope that, somewhere deep inside me, there would be a way out.

But hope... hope had long since abandoned me....

I waited for my mom to talk to me, but every day felt like a waiting game, one where I was never quite sure when the words would come or if they would come at all. The air in our house felt thick, heavy with unspoken things. My mom seemed like she was always on the edge, on the verge of something, but it was never the right moment to talk. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to her; I desperately did. But it was like she couldn't hear me, or maybe, even worse, she didn't want to hear me.

Most days, it was just the same silence, the same indifferent air between us. It wasn't even the kind of silence where you could pretend everything was fine. No, this silence carried the weight of unspoken resentment, the kind that grew with every passing day. My mom's words were short, sharp, and filled with bitterness. She would speak to me, but it wasn't the motherly concern or comfort I craved. It was like she was just going through the motions, trying to get through the day without truly connecting with me.

And then there was the anger. It wasn't always loud, but it was there, lurking in every conversation, every glance. It wasn't the kind of anger that made you feel like you could argue it out. No, it was the kind of anger that pushed you away, made you feel small, made you feel like nothing you did could ever make it better. There was no safe place to go in our house. No warm words, no comforting touch. Just a steady stream of hate and resentment that seemed to infect everything.

Meanwhile, my dad was always in a foul mood. I don't remember the last time he wasn't angry. It was like his default setting. His temper flared easily, and he often retreated to his own world, locking himself away in his room or his study, only emerging when something made him even angrier. I would try to avoid him, try to stay out of his way, but it didn't really matter. It was like his anger hung over all of us, like a storm cloud that never went away.

"You're just like your father—useless and impossible to deal with."

It was clear that things between my parents weren't good. I could feel it in the way they looked at each other, the way they spoke—or didn't speak—when they were in the same room. They were two strangers living in the same house, existing in parallel worlds but never really connecting. I would listen to their arguments from the other side of the door, trying to make sense of the words I didn't understand, but it was always the same: accusations, blame, hurt. I didn't know what had happened to them, but whatever it was, it seemed like it had broken them beyond repair.

Despite everything, my college life was going well. I was keeping up with my studies, making friends, and generally staying focused on what mattered to me. But the peace I found in school was always overshadowed by the chaos I came home to. I couldn't escape it. No matter how far I ran during the day, when I came home, the tension was always waiting for me. It was like being stuck in a storm, unable to find shelter.

And my mom, well, she seemed to be consumed by it all. It wasn't just my dad's anger that got to her—it was also the way she viewed me. There was a constant bitterness in her words whenever she spoke to me about anything. It wasn't just frustration with my dad anymore; it felt like I had become the target, the one who could absorb all her anger and disappointment. She would criticize everything I did, no matter how small. If I didn't meet her expectations, it was like a personal failure to her.

"Why can't you just be like your father? At least he knows how to handle things."

"You're nothing like him. If you were, maybe you'd have your life together by now."

I never really understood why she was so angry. There were days when I tried to talk to her about it, but it always felt like she wasn't listening. It wasn't that she didn't care, I thought—she must care, right? But her words never showed it. I would try to open up, to express how I was feeling, but it was always met with a wall. A cold, impenetrable wall.

Then, there was my aunt. I knew that my relationship with my mom and dad had been strained for a while, but I didn't understand just how much influence my aunt had on it all. She was always talking about me to my parents, whispering things in their ears. "Your daughter is like this," she would say. "She's doing that," or "She's not good enough." It felt like every word she spoke planted a seed of doubt in my parents' minds, feeding into the animosity they already felt toward each other.

"You know, she's never going to amount to anything. You're wasting your time with her."

I could see it happening. The more my aunt spoke, the more my mom started to view me differently. It wasn't just her criticism of my choices or my behavior—it was the way she spoke to me as if I was a disappointment, as if I was the source of all their problems. And I began to wonder if maybe my mom believed it, too.

"You're just a bad kid. Why can't you be like your father, at least he's got his life together?"

There were nights when I would lie awake in bed, my mind racing, trying to make sense of everything. My college life was fine, but my family life was unraveling. It felt like I was stuck in the middle, trying to balance both worlds but never really succeeding in either. I wanted to tell my parents how much I loved them, how much I wanted things to be better, but I didn't know how. I didn't know how to break through the walls that had been built between us.

It was hard not to feel like I was the problem. Everyone around me seemed to be blaming me, or at least, that's how it felt. My mom's anger, my dad's constant bad mood, my aunt's whispers—it was all too much. I began to question myself, to wonder if maybe I was the one who had caused all this. Maybe if I had been better, if I had done more, things wouldn't be this way.

But then, there were moments when I realized that I wasn't the cause of their pain. It wasn't my fault that my parents were unhappy, and it wasn't my fault that my aunt chose to spread negativity. It wasn't my responsibility to fix everything, no matter how much I wanted to. I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't change them, and I couldn't make them see me the way I wanted them to.

It wasn't easy. It wasn't fair. But it was the truth, and sometimes, that's all you can hold onto when everything else is falling apart...I live on the hope of becoming myself whole without love and affection...