The House That Was Never A Home.
There’s a coldness that lingers in the air, even when the sun floods the windows and the curtains sway with the breeze. This house is not home. It’s just walls and a roof—a hollow shell of what it was supposed to be. They call it a “broken home,” but broken doesn’t feel strong enough. It feels shattered, splintered into pieces too small to gather. Each piece cuts me when I try to hold it together, yet I still do, because what else am I here for?
I am the firstborn. A daughter with hands too young to carry so much weight, yet here I am, always holding it together for everyone else. I am the glue, the fixer, the peacemaker. But no one notices that my cracks run deeper than the walls of this house. No one hears the silent sound of me falling apart inside, piece by piece, every day.
He’s here, my father—physically here. His footsteps echo on the floor, the rhythm as steady and hollow as the ticking of a clock. His voice, a sharp wind, cuts through the stillness, but never brings warmth. He’s like the shadow of a tree that blocks the sun but offers no shelter. He’s a storm without rain—loud, consuming, but empty. His eyes scan the room, but they never stop long enough to really see me. I’m invisible to him, a blurred figure in the background of his life.
Sometimes, I watch fathers with their little girls and wonder what I did to deserve this. “How could you hurt a little kid?” I can’t forget; I can’t forgive. His absence, even in his presence, has left scars that I carry into every relationship. “Now I’m scared that everyone I love will leave me.” It’s a fear scattered across my family line. “I’m so good at telling lies,” lies I learned from my mother’s side. “Told a million to survive.”
And my mother—oh, my mother. She loves, but her love feels like a burden I am forced to carry. It’s heavy, wrapped in guilt and the sharp edges of her expectations. “Mom, please wake up.” But she doesn’t. She can’t see the chaos around her, the cracks in the walls she pretends don’t exist. She’s blind to my father’s absence, my brother’s rebellion, my own silent cries for help. “Dad’s with a slut, and your son is smoking cannabis.” But no one listens. No one ever listens.
My mother’s love binds me in vines that strangle. “You have to understand,” she says when I try to speak, but she never tries to understand me. To her, I am not a daughter—I am an extension of her dreams, her failures, her regrets. I’ve learned to smile for the picture, to pose with my siblings, to play the role of the perfect family. “Everyone thinks that we’re perfect; please don’t let them look through the curtains.” The truth must stay hidden behind doll faces and fake smiles.
I’ve learned that defending myself is a crime in this house. When I speak up, I am the villain in a story I didn’t write. “After all we’ve done for you,” they say, and their words slam against my chest like fists. My protests are painted as selfishness, my pain dismissed as overreaction. I’ve swallowed my truth so many times it feels like choking, the bitterness of my silenced screams filling my lungs.
I am tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep can fix. I am burned out, exhausted by years of being everything for everyone while being seen as a failure. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much of myself I give, it is never enough. I am a flame that has burned too long, flickering, barely alive, yet still here.
There are nights when I cry alone, pressing my face into a pillow to muffle the sound. Not because I don’t want to be heard, but because I know no one will come. Vulnerability is a weakness here, a fire that burns brighter than they can bear to see. My pain is just another whisper lost in the cacophony of their indifference.
I have become an artist of pretending. I wear smiles like masks, each one carefully painted to hide the chaos underneath. I laugh on cue, nod on command, and shape myself into the daughter they expect. But inside, I am crumbling. Inside, I am a forest of dying trees, the weight of their neglect snapping my branches one by one.
Being the firstborn is a crown made of thorns. It pierces me with responsibility, with expectations that bleed me dry. My siblings look to me with innocent eyes, and I give them everything I have because I can’t bear to let them feel what I feel. But who do I look to? When my strength is gone, when my hands are empty, who will carry me?
Sometimes, I wonder if they even know me. Not the obedient daughter, not the fixer or the buffer between their conflicts, but me. The girl who just wants to be seen, to be heard, to be loved without strings attached. I wonder if they’ve ever noticed how quiet I’ve become, how small I’ve made myself so I don’t upset their fragile world.
- This house is not home. It’s a battlefield where love is a weapon, where silence is a shield, and where honesty is a luxury we can’t afford. It’s a place where my voice is a ripple in a raging sea, drowned out before it can even reach the shore.
I long for escape. I dream of a home where I can exhale, where my tears aren’t seen as weakness but as a language of the heart. I want a place where I can be vulnerable without fear, where my cracks are filled with light instead of shame.
But for now, I stay. I stay because leaving feels like betrayal, because my heart still hopes for a love that will never come. I stay because I’ve been taught that sacrifice is love, even when it’s killing me.
- One day, I hope I will leave this house. I will find a place where I don’t have to carry so much, where I am more than what I can give. A place where I am enough just as I am. But until that day, I remain. The firstborn. The daughter. The silent heart of a house that has never been a home. “I can run, but I can’t hide from my family line.”
I hope it will never be “the cut that always bleeds” in my life. I hope history won’t repeat after itself. I hope in the future, when I already have my own family, I will make sure that my children will never feel the way I’ve felt. I hope my traumas are not going to affect my future beings.
