Published in Edition Six (2024) as part of the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune column.

What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? Now I am on fire. I believe you, I believe you, I believe you, I believe you, liar.” (I Believe You Liar, Meg Washington, I Believe You Liar)

A faint fan sound, drilling in the background. You sit with your back to the knife rack in the kitchen. There is waiting to be waited.

You know what you want to say, what you need to say.

The rain outside the windows manifests in small droplets that are not there if you don’t concentrate on their existence. It’s like they’re not even there, not even there. If you tried hard enough, maybe you could be not even there.

Three generations of women in your family, getting married and having children seem to flash before your eyes; a life of being told. We’ve always been told. We give up our dreams, we get into relationships and then we get married and have his children in his way, paid for by his credit card. We fulfill his dreams in any way we can.

You can’t treat me this way. I will not be treated this way.

Arguing with a sister, for what might be the final time, leaves you on edge; saying these things makes you feel sick. You know it feels like being a drunk, angry man if you come at it wrong. But you haven’t come at it wrong. You’ve done exactly the right thing: you waited until it was a good time, you wrote a script over and over again in your head, you talked to your psychologist about it, you even consulted with your dad’s urn. But there’s no one to blame when it goes wrong but yourself.

The thing about confronting someone when they’ve done you wrong is that it’s technically the high road. But most people don’t take the high road, at the end of the day. But you’re not confronting her. You’re talking to her. You’re just trying to talk to her. Day after day, it becomes apparent that if you don’t point it out to her, she might never see it, and you’ll just keep resenting her. But it’s more complicated than just that.

It all begins here: the rest of your life.

You will not be like your parents: will not fight over little things, will not ignore the person you’re fighting with for weeks on end just because they’ve upset you. Won’t lie to feel like a good person. You will not allow people to treat you like shit in your own home.

And now you’ve come face to face with it: the final piece in the giant mess to be cleaned up. Because that’s what it is, a mess. Your life is a mess. So, take care of it. Go on, do it.

Your beautiful baby sister: left behind, left out, left over when both parents are gone. And she hates you. And now you have to come to terms with it.

“Georgie,”

“Olivia.” She’s curt.

“I want you to know how I feel”

“I want you to know how I feel.”

And while one talks the other doesn’t listen. And there is nowhere left to go. Just like the other three generations of women in your family knew not to argue with their husbands: you know how she feels, she knows how you feel. She just doesn’t care. And you don’t care enough to compromise. And it hurts, deep in your throat and in your chest knowing that she’ll never care. And you can never explain to anyone how much that hurts. Like a self-kept secret. Like a very small, everyday hell. Like arguing with a younger you.

And when you sit alone in your living room, surrounded by the no one you’ve kept around, you keep having to wonder why your own mother and sister don’t even love you. Why, why, why in the world do the people who have to love you either die or hate you.

All this shit about breaking the cycle. You try and talk, and they don’t listen. And you just have to live with the fact that your only living family is not going to care about you. Ever. You have friends, they become your family. There: family. But it isn’t the same. Not really. And you have to wonder, why can’t the cycle end with them and not you?

And when you stare in the mirror, tear-stained, blue in the face, what will you tell yourself?

The windows show a bleak, humid world where the fruits don’t grow like they’re s’posed to and the lions, tigers and bears run away with Dorothy’s fortune. The weather isn’t what it’s supposed to be. Instead of being washed clean, you’re only getting dirtier by the second.

Either you pay $800 per week just to stay alive, or you move back home and get nailed into the walls, told what to do just like your mother, and her mother, and her mother before her.

So, this is adulthood. All you can do is hope it’s worth it.

Leave your door open to be broken into.

Be not found here.