When I think about my house, I think about my home. The place where I’ve grown up, the comforts of the gentle rocking chairs and the hum and warmth of the walls.
I think about the bedrooms my sister and I swapped when we got bored, the games we’d play with the dining room chairs that became a fort.
I think about the sprinkler in the yard and how it rose up through the trampoline in summer. I think about my cat lounging in the sun.
But when I think about my house, my home, I’m forced to think about the toxic, cloud that hovers overhead, a constant reminder that life here is dark.
The shadow that burdens me and my parents.
My sister.
The darkness that follows her has tainted my life. I cannot enjoy being at home anymore because she is there and god forbid anyone lives a life in this house that might disturb her.
The slightest sigh might even set her off.
I never know, coming home from living my life, if I’m going to be met by The User: the aggressive, intimidating one. The Comedown: the drug induced paranoid who thinks I’m hiding things in the walls that she punches holes in. Or The Mute: the sleeper who only emerges for food because being awake for three to five days without sleep causes a lethargic sloth to take her place.
Living with an abuser of such a toxic substance explains why she’s selfish and treats those around her like absolute trash, it explains the lack of compassion and lack of love.
But it in no way excuses her behaviour. She chooses to act the way she does, she chooses to be negative and toxic to us. She chooses to be domestically violent and chooses to live this life.
I can understand how hard it can be to change her habits but I cannot for the life of me understand why you would neglect the help offered to you. If you truely wanted to be a better person, be something more and be something loveable again, how can you ignore all thats been given to you?
That, I’ll never understand.