Everyone around me knowns something is not right.
From strangers on the street to my dearest friends and family, they all know something is foundamentally wrong. Their understanding is skin deep, but it is there nonetheless. I have passed out tokens of my pain, pieces of my struggle, and allotments of my sickness. To them I have given every ingrident they would need to facribcate a perception of my agony. Yet they say nothing. They do nothing because to them, I am nothing.
I am but a disappointment, a glaring smudge on their picture picture life that is tainted by my existances. They have this way of seeming so concerned, so outwardly afflicted by my troubles, that people outside of our home are wholly convinced I am well taken care of. To some extend this is true. But beyond this empty notion of the perfect parents, I am nothing but a scared child, bruised and broken, crying on the bathroom floor, riddled with scars and crying out for help.
My panic falls on deaf ears. My family is content with leaving me to myself to fix my wounds and heal my scars. They do not wish to taint their hands with the messiness of my blood.
I understand, yes, but I also cringe when I see this for myself. With a great sense of clairity, I realize why they don't wish to entangle themselves with my problems, but they are my family.
I would do anything for them, but they, they will not even look at me. I cannot count the days they have not been here for me when I needed them.
And when they suddenly feel as though it's time to replenish our reputation of the perfect family, I am given attention. Suddenly, I am worthing caring for. From there, we are bombarded with acknoledgement and appraisals of how truly wonderful and functional and happy our family is.
But that is all lies.
Those strangers were not in my room, crying with me on my floor, when my parents brought three small children into our home and expected me to love them and take care of them as if I was not a child myself. A child who so desperatley needed her parents. When I needed my family the most, that was when they brought into our home three more children they were not fit to take care of.
It was me who was left with the burden of taking care of them. It was me who cried herself to sleep at night while my mother read them a story and stayed with them until they fell asleep. It was me who was forced to sit and watch while those children received more love and affection in that year in a half than I have ever felt in my entire life.
My family expected me to accept them as sisters, but they took away the only haven I ever had. Before, my home was just that: a home. A safe place, a sanctuary, but now it is a reminder of how I was never enough. When those children came into my home, it proved that my family was capable of loving the broken and healing the wounds of scarred children.
That was when I realized I was too great a burden.
That was when I realized it was all lies. I was never what they wanted.
You see, my family is so good at faking. They are conissuerous at trickery and deceit. They can make strangers believe almost anything, but those strangers never see what goes on when their fake smiles fade and their attention drifts to anything but me. They don't see what goes on in the dark of my house that is no longer a home. They don't see that my parents are so full of lies, and that to them, I am so easily forgotten and replaced.
They don't see that while I am strong and unfeeling and reserved, I am still a child who wants nothing more than her mother to keep her safe from the monsters.
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