This is temporary, I tell myself as I rot away in bed. Dad’s house was never the greatest. The faint hollers from other rooms irritate my mind and increase the urge to set myself free and launch myself out the window.
Everything is temporary. Everything has its end. Life has its end. The world has its end. Someday, anything you can think of will end. Over. Gone.
This week has stretched to seem like it’s been forever. But nothing is forever.
My dad’s house is trashy. Messy. Ugly. Toxic.
My mom’s house is clean. Well-kept. Better, but still toxic.
I switch between the two over and over again, and sometimes I feel as if I will never experience the comfort of living in one home. And don’t get me started on how I’m always the one being shoved in the middle of their issues. I’m the eldest daughter. Smart. Responsible.
But I’m the bad daughter, as I’ve been told.
The memories of the past haunt me at night and continue to trigger me now. Yet, I always get looked over as if they were nothing. As if I were nothing. As if I could never be heard or seen.
I’ve been told that I’ll never be loved, and I can’t help but believe it. I want to be heard and seen and loved and wanted. I don’t want to be nothing.
Mom’s house. The clean house. The better house. Instead of the adults being aggravated at each other, they’re aggravated at me. Because I’m the bad daughter, remember?
I don’t want to be the bad daughter or the loudmouth or the smart one or the one that was regretted. I just want to be Layla. I shouldn’t be called anything but my name. And one day, people will remember my name. People will know it, and it will not be known as nothing.
I don’t want to live like this. Be like this. Be known like this.
Not forever.
Because as I’ve said before: This is temporary.
Author’s Note:
I want people to at least get a general idea of what I know and what I’ve seen. I want people to know my one desire I listed on that link. I want people to see me as something.
Layla Serenity Kim | 13 | Oregon, USA | @kickass_serenity on TikTok
