Staring out the window, I watched as the light wind ruffled the leaves on the still-green trees. The sun was barely visible behind the bright clouds, but it still cast a golden glow on everything it touched. Amazingly, it hadn't rained in this town for 42 days, a record. The forecast had been stuck in this repeating pattern of mid seventies to low eighties for almost two months now. Perfect, tolerable weather. Weather that people had always complained about not having. I hated it.

The cheery and light weather painfully contrasted my dark and gloomy mood. I wanted rain, thunder, a big black storm that would force people to stay indoors and watch the storm unravel from the safety of their bedroom windows. I wanted lightening to strike the fear in my heart, to make me alive again. I wanted to feel the value in life that people kept on talking about. Only with howling winds and angst-driven rain, only then would I remember why. I wasn't suicidal. I was nearly lifeless. Almost all the life and vitality and spark that should fill 18 year old girls was drained out of me, gradually evaporating as my life fell into a tedious yet practiced routine. The mundane repetition brought the questions. It made me think. Reevaluate everything I had ever thought I’d known. I had worked until like a worn machine, I had burned out.

~~
Unconsciously moving my fork around my plate, I let my thoughts surround me like a haze. Resigned and tired thoughts that were now a constant state of mind. I had gotten so used to it that it had become comfortable, a new normal. Raised voices yanked me back down to Earth. I blinked twice and took a sip of my milk to fool anyone who looked too closely into thinking that my carefully arranged features were just a façade to keep them out. The milk had grown warm and I had come to close to spilling it when my mother's raising voice punctuated into a distinct yell. I allowed myself to listen, if only to quietly return whatever accusation she was throwing this time.
"...are never grateful, I don't know why I went into the trouble of having children at all, if I would have known…"

I went back to tuning everything out. This rant had almost become a daily occurrence.
My mother was not a drunk. Nor a drug addict. She was a stressed out middle aged lady whose traditional idea of the complete obedience children owed to their parents was more unrealistic than she ever had guessed. She didn't know her children would challenge every ideal she had grown up on, every rule she made. She didn't know that they needed to breathe, needed room to expand. But she kept them in tightly locked cages believing that it was in their best interest. The more I struggled against the cage's wrought iron bars, the more energy sapped out, escaping through the air. Like a fly trapped inside, I flew against the window again and again, only to be knocked down every time until I could only muster the strength to simply peer out the window with unseeing eyes.

Only at night and in the early morning did I forget. Sometimes I lit the candles in my room and watched them as they flickered and the heat patiently ate away at the wax. Would I burn out when they did? Or would I still be hanging on by the thinnest thread? I would rest my head on my cool pillow that smelled familiar and safe. When I was close to escaping reality for the night, my dreams and hopes and wishes would leak out in the form of warm salty tears leaving me with nothing to envision but darkness until in an amount of time that was both too long and not long enough, the glaring sun hurtled me into another day.