In That Which My Life Closely Resembles An Oreo (Without Being Half So Delicious)

The tense voices of my mother and sister drift up to me from down the stairs, rising in a hushed crescendo as they have so many times over the course of our living here.

Here being our (technically unofficial/semi-illegal) state-wide move. Here being a 2 bedroom house-y thing with three whole bathrooms. Yeah, I still can't get over having 3 accesible toilets.



I think a lot of people will spend time trying to forget moments like these. Moments where you hum under your breath or turn the shower on just that bit harder, to drown out the shouting. Or the silence. They both slice everyone in their wake, regardless of their intended recipient. And I know silence can be just as a bad as screams.

I've been hearing an awful lot of both, these past weeks.

I'm a fanciful child, undoubtedly, but I didn't really expect everything to be magically repaired with this move. I just thought some things might resolve themselves. Maybe my mother and sister would stop fighting on a daily basis. Maybe my sister would stop whining about my attitude and my mother's tendency to stick up for me. Maybe my mother would be able to relax a bit and be there for my sister again. Maybe maybemaybe.

But no. "Nothing ever happens the way you imagine it will.". And I've known that for a while but now it hurts because, like a fool, I was relying on those changes. Depending on them, counting on them. Vaguely planning around changes I was sure were inevitable. And now I'm just yet another teenage girl, again. Another confused, anxious and worried little girl who bites problems away because she doesn't know what else to do. I'm like a villain from a cartoon- for some reason, my bomb isn't going off. There are little, penciled question marks floating above my head as I retreat to my Evil Lair and attempt to puzzle out what the hell just happened.

This entire move- no.
No, this entire year, since February, I've been clinging to the uncharacteristically optimistic belief that things will get better. Things will improve, and each step forward is a step towards a brighter future.
I needed that belief. I needed it to get me through meetings with my father, and teary nights with my mother. Needed that belief to propel me, to force me to smile and simper at my dad, and consolingly rub my mother's back. I needed it to survive, I guess.

But now that the light is at the end of the tunnel, I'm forced to come to terms with the one option I had vehemently refused to entertain, before. Couldn't entertain, before.

What if it never gets better? What if it's always like this?

Pretentious bullshit though it may be, I've always had a fondness for the yin-yang philosophy. That in order to have good times you must have bad, as in order to have light you must have dark. I know it's stupid, in a way. Childish, certainly. But I'm still a child, and I'll probably never grow up.
And I don't want to think that my life will be all black. But I know there are people out whose lives have been all black. That it's entirely possible for me.

And, to be quite simplistic, that scares me.
But I think

I think there's a very good possibility my life will become all black. As the Magic 8 ball says, "All signs point to yes".
I think, in the compass of my life, the dial's on black right now. And that in preparation for my life, I may as well get used to it.

Not defeat, per se, so much as preparedness.


I wish I could sleep.