There once lived a little girl in a beautiful great house. With her lived her brother, sister, mother, and father. Together, they were one big happy family. Of this, the girl was sure.
However, a few years go by, and the girl suddenly feels less sure. While she sits at night in her large queen bed, she is kept awake by the noise downstairs. She hears ceramics shatter, voices raised, but knows not to leave her room. Time goes by, and she slowly forgets.
More years progress, but the girl starts to notice a glass constantly in her father’s hand. If it weren’t for the pungent smell, she would’ve thought it was water. But she knows. And suddenly, she starts to remember her nights as a little girl. Now she wonders if her family is happy.
But again, she forgets about her family, because now, she is wondering if she is happy. She feels a dull ache, but nothing any medicine would cure. She wonders aimlessly about her existence and meaning. But somehow, over time, she is able to push the darkness deep inside, and she fools herself into thinking it is gone.
For a time being, she says she’s happy. She quickly assures that her family must be happy too by now. And years go by, where the girl lives in an ignorance bliss. But of course, nothing lasts eternally.
On a scorching hot summer day, the girl is playing with her brother, when she suddenly notices them. The scars. They line his wrists in different depths and sizes. Her brother doesn’t know what to say, and the girl only cries. Slowly, the girl feels herself slipping again towards the darkness, and this brings them closer together. The brother and the girl, they learn to tell all but their deepest darkest secrets to each other. The girl no longer fears the darkness, but like her brother, begins to find a comfort in it. And then her brother tells her what she refused to see all those years before. He whispers the secrets of his own, but also of all those she thought she knew.
When he was younger, he had an accident. He too had been feeling the pain, but took too much medicine to cope. She remembers this night, a few years ago, on New Year’s Eve, which she had spent alone with her sister when her parents rushed him to the hospital. Since, he finds comfort in creating a little pain instead, something the girl never did, too this day, understand. And then he talks of the man who created his own death, and the sister, and now mother of three, who became so sad as a result. The brother tells stories about the father, which the girl slowly begins to remember. And life goes on. But this time, the girl does not forget, not does she ever mistake their family as being happy.
Time goes by, it’s hard to say how much, and now the girl is talking to her mom. They talk about the common subject of their father. It is clear to everyone that the girl is not close to him. The loud voice all those years ago scared her away. But still, the mother persists. She deludes herself to thinking they can all be happy one day. She believes it is one day possible for the girl and the father to walk hand in hand. The girl knows better, but loves her mother very dearly, so she lets her speak. And soon, they begin spilling more secrets. The girl reveals that she wished the father would leave them all. The mother insists she is happy, but the girl knows better. And then the mother whispers her darkest secret, one she never thought she would say aloud. While the girl had been ignorant and happy, the mother was happy too, but with another man. And suddenly the girl understands. The father, he knew, but they stayed together, and the mother can never leave again. To her, he is forgiving. To the girl, he is selfish, but she knows better than to say it aloud. So she doesn’t. Instead she reveals that she wished they were friends, and that they didn’t love each other. The mother, confused, insists its love. But this only makes the girl sadder. In some distorted way, she would have been happier if they didn’t love each other, because this isn’t what she wanted love to be. The girl always dreamed of a prince that would rescue her from this madness. Of all the things she learned over time, the most devastating was the awful reality of love. But life went on.
To this day, the girl knows she can never go back to the ignorant bliss that made her unaware of the darkness surrounding her family. She no longer finds comfort in the thought of love, or of being saved, because she no longer believes either to exist. Instead, she sees a little hope in her little sister, who was given the gift of ignorance in this tragic world. The girl finds her little happiness around the naive ones, who, for better of worse, can still see the best in people.