#howisurvive

Pick your battles.

The shittiest thing about dysfunctional families (and trust me there are a lot of things) is the way everyone pits each other against the other.

What we say to someone is always at risk of being perceived as completely opposite of what we hoped to say so that's why its best that we just stay quiet.

There are weeks, months even, where the peace is kept. Peace, meaning, no fighting, no screaming, the people that can’t tolerate each other don’t talk to each other. Her sister lives without anxiety, her brother doesn’t play hours of FPS. She herself doesn’t fantasize about moving far away, safe in a small apartment with her books and cat and she can live in peace. Real peace. But then someone doesn’t take their blood pressure meds, drinks chai a little too late and the peace is broken. Suddenly their is screaming and swearing. Swearing delivered via “aap” and “aapka”, remnants of a 30 year old relationship that should never have even happened. And with the first hint of a raised voice, she leaves. Suddenly, she’s wearing her favorite hoodie and sweats, standing in the middle of a small living room in an apartment somewhere in Texas. She has a balcony that looks onto a small pond (nothing like her dreams of living by the ocean but the pond will do). Inside, there’s a small kitchen with all the tools she needs to make her favorite dishes with an amateur hand. It’s a two bedroom apartment, but she’s the only one in it. The first bedroom has— and then someone yanks her back. Her sister is running toward her, her crying already uncontrollable, hyperventilating, shaking, hands covering her face. The screaming continues, piercing the closed door. Breathe, she says. Follow my breaths. In, out, in, out, in—inside she’s yelling. Inside she’s crying harder than her sister. Inside she’s running up a down escalator, pulling on a push door, wading through quicksand. Quicksand that, if she can just get through it, her apartment will be there. Just get through the quicksand. 

Not my mom telling my older sister not to give me silent treatment because its wrong when she LITERALLY is the one who taught the whole family how to give people silent treatment.