Chaos.

My perfect little world was tumbling down.

I didn’t really understand what was happening, all I knew was that my mom was mad at my dad, REALLY mad. This is how it all started.

My mom was in the kitchen cooking dinner. She was making breakfast for dinner, and because we had it so seldom, it was one of my favorites at the time. There was food spread all over the counter: plates of bacon, sausage, and pancakes; bowls of grits, cereal, and eggs; cups of juice, milk, and water. She was in the middle of taking the final pancakes off of the griddle when my dad walked into the house.
Almost like she was being controlled like a marionette, my mom went completely still. Holding her body erect, she slowly turned towards my dad. As if an emotional storm had been brewing and had finally broken, my mom started yelling and screaming at my dad. For long minutes, what she was saying was incomprehensible to my young ears, but I would catch snippets of her speech here and there. I heard questions like “Where were you?” and “How could you?” Through it all, my mom’s eyes were slowly forming rivers of tears down her long face.

Out of nowhere, something in my mom clicked and she started to throw things off of the counter at my dad. There was cereal and eggs flying through the air towards my dad, but luckily, he was able to deflect most of the onslaught of food. After my mom ran out of food to throw, she pushed him out of the garage door, and yelled at him to leave and not come back.

I couldn’t comprehend what was happening between them, but I knew it wasn’t good. I decided that it would be nice if I cleaned up after my mom, mostly because I could see in her face how broken she was, and I figured that she could use some rest after her tirade. Before I started to clean up, I ushered my little sister out of the room so that she couldn’t see the tears that were threatening to break through my eyes. Then, I slowly bent sown and started to clean. My tears got so large and heavy that after a minute, I had to stop cleaning because I could no longer see. My mom came in, saw me sitting of the floor crying, bent down, and gave me a big hug, tears still rolling down her cheeks. She was trying to comfort me, but she was the one who was really in need of the comfort.

That day, my perfect little world crumbled to the ground. Before, I was a loud, outgoing girl that had not a care in the world, but after that day, I started to live inside of myself more, barely speaking a word to anyone, hiding in my room and not coming out. What happened that day had a huge effect on who I am now. I am still getting over the silence that begun, still struggling to wear the mask of a happy girl, when, in reality, I still don’t understand how the two people that I love the most could create so much sadness and anger within me. Over the past few years, I have sometimes forgotten what happened between my parents, but most of the time, the full realization of what happened hits, and I get angry and sad at what my parents did, but I hide it from them and everyone else, causing myself to revert back to that sad, quiet girl that I once was, and will continue to be, no matter how hard I try to be happy.