When I wake up, I like to pretend I can hear the crunch of eggshells cracking and the hiss of runny yolks dancing on a pan. I pretend I can smell the fluffiness of soft, scrambled eggs strewn with a pinch of salt, accompanied with a slice of toast. And I pretend my parents are down there, reading the newspaper, cooking, loving each other, loving me.

I like to pretend that the world is perfect and that everything is okay.

Instead I walk downstairs to find a worn down table with a loaf of bread hastily thrown upon it. I do not show my disappointment, because it is unreasonably selfish to cry over the golden days. We do not talk about those days in our family.

I open the bag and reach inside for a slice of bread. My elbows stick to the table when my fingers clasp onto a soft slice. I pull it out and bite mechanically.

Time is forming icicles in the morning. I am the one perturber of silence in my household. For forty gracious minutes I am in control. I am the creator of noise. I cause the crinkle of the bread bag. I cause the chair to groan under my weight.

For ten merciful minutes I actually have full control my life.

Then the ice thaws and I hear the roar of the bus coming. Once again I am under bondage and my life is chained up to a incorrigible, cold world. I grab my backpack and run outside to my bus stop. The street gutters burn my nose of acrid smells as I run. My feet stamp the yellow grass below me, obliterating it to dust. The manikin guy on my neighbor’s porch smiles at me. I make it on the bus just in time.

I deposit myself on the front seat and say nothing. I sit in complete silence. The bus bounces around the corner. Time winds backwards. Then time becomes nothing at all…

…

..

.

I remember the last time they started fighting. My mom was frustrated because she had to work so hard all Dad did was go to church. We were running out of money quickly. There were two kids in college, six other kids approaching college. My father was angry because my mom was never home. They were getting old, working like this was getting impossible.

And my little sister and I were hiding upstairs. We listened in bewilderment as they snapped at each other. My heart shattered into pieces one by one the more I heard them talk.

Wait. I can hear it again. Mom is talking.

And I hear the sounds crescendo into full out screams. Dad doesn’t care about Mom. Yes, he does. No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t work at all, and Mom has to drink and drink to pretend this world doesn’t exist. Then Dad gets angry and tells Mom that maybe he doesn’t care about her.

I close my eyes, wishing my dad would stop talking. Please stop… we still can be a happy family again. Just like a few years ago. Just stop.

Mom is speechless for minutes. The house hushes to listen what she has to say next. Life is still for the next few moments. I could not believe my dad would say that. My little sister chokes back a sob and is shaking at my thigh. Finally, when my mom speaks, it’s a whisper of three words that shattered my world.

“I hate you.”

My little sister stifles a scream as we consequently hear her collapse in anguish. The rest becomes a blur— my father is screaming on the telephone, the wail of the siren, and my little sister crying, crying over my mom.

And I had fainted through the whole thing.

I stopped going to church from that moment on. My dad took my family there but when he went to help with the church services, I would run away and ditch. I would walk around the neighborhood, maybe pick out a weed. Maybe stretch and squeeze the life out of it until its juice dribbles down my wrists.

So what? It probably didn’t really hurt as much as my heart.

God had abandoned us. We should have known that ever since my mom had to work all the time, when we lost all our money and when we lost everything.

God abandoned us. He doesn’t care.

There is nobody in this world I can trust. There is no hope or faith in this place. All of it is meaningless, empty lies.