I just didn't understand why my mother was so happy. Her smile stretched from ear to ear, eyes shining like some impossible sun that refused to set. And me? I knew one thing for certain—no miracle that hadn't happened in the past five years was about to happen now.
I watched her beam all the way home, singing softly to herself, humming like life still had something to offer. It was really starting to piss me off. All I wanted was to get home, be pushed to my room, collapse on my bed, and open my laptop to search for new ways to kill myself—methods that wouldn't let my parents find out.
I'm tired. Exhausted. Bone-deep tired. I've been carrying this weight for five years.
Before the accident, I had friends—or, to be fair, fake friends. None of them came to see me after I got hit. Not one. And I don't blame them. Who wants to be associated with a cripple, deaf, and mute girl? No one, and I certainly wouldn't.
When we finally got home, the familiar stench of alcohol hit me first. My father, Mr. Johnson, was drinking again. Not that it surprised me. Ever since the accident, he's blamed himself, and like most men trying to escape their guilt, he drowned it in bottles.
Sometimes, I wish I could drink like him. Just once. To numb the numbness, to silence the screaming thoughts and the hollow ache that stretches through every inch of me.
Mama said something to him. I couldn't hear the words—her lips moved fast, urgent, sharp—but I could read enough. Probably something between "I thought we talked about this" and "Stop drinking, at least in front of our daughter."
His eyes flicked from her to me. And there it was again—the guilt I've seen every single day for five years. I remember the first year after the accident. He drank, and I tried to stop him. I wrote notes, tried to convince him it wasn't his fault. Deep down, though, I blamed him. He had sent me out that day. If he hadn't, I wouldn't be sitting here—crippled, silent, watching my parents destroy themselves. But I never let him see that.
By the second year, I tried to believe it wasn't his fault, telling myself lies so I could comfort him. But the truth is brutal and simple: if he hadn't sent me out that day, I'd be in university, dancing, singing, living. Instead, I'm a ghost of who I used to be, and he's another ghost of himself.
The beer bottles rolled across the table like tiny prisoners escaping, but he didn't speak, didn't care. He just drank. Sometimes, I catch myself praying that the alcohol would take him, not out of hate, but because then Mama wouldn't have to carry us both. She works endlessly, juggling two broken lives and her own, and still somehow manages to keep smiling.
Thirty minutes passed, the arguments unspoken, the tension thick in the air. Mama's lips moved faster than my eyes could follow; I guessed she was scolding him, trying to reason with him, trying to keep what little semblance of family we had from falling apart entirely. Finally, she wheeled me to my room.
It had been moved to the ground floor years ago, "more convenient" for my condition. Convenient. What a bitter, perfect word. Convenient. As if my life, my suffering, my entire existence, could be summarized in a single, sterile word.
I collapsed onto the bed, feeling the weight of the world press down on me. I hated life. Every single bit of it. The walls seemed to close in, the shadows of the room stretching long and mocking, whispering that there was nothing left for me. Nothing but the ache, the silence, the hopelessness that had been my only companion for five long years.