#kingdomsrp

It doesn't work when the yelling stops, when your mother stops yelling and just leaves.  Covering your ears doesn't work when there's nothing to block out and everything comes rushing at you from all directions.  Your mother isn't there to sigh when you come running in with bruised knees or to yell at you when you (accidentally) set the curtains on fire.

The poor Prewett girl, whose mother didn't care enough to stick around.

(Now you close your eyes and cover your ears so you can't see the pitying looks, so you can't hear their pitying words.)

You hold your tongue when people insult your mother, because to do otherwise is rude, and she's just gone for now.  She'll come back soon, every time she leaves she comes back and that's the important part.  Your mother always comes back, like a boomerang, she's a boomerang.  Even if (when, it's not an if, it's never been an if, even if you and your father didn't want to admit to it, it was never an if) she leaves, she'll always come back.  Your father always bends down in front of you, brushes your hair out of your eyes, and tells you that she'll be back, it's just for now.  It always lingers in the air, that it is not her fault, never her fault.  Nobody's fault except her mother's.

Except you can't help but blame yourself, a little bit.

You shut your eyes and cover your ears, pretending not to see the looks, hear what they're saying, and pretending that everything isn't your fault.

When she comes back, nearly a year later, everything goes back to normal.  Except you hate her a little bit (you're nine and a half and you hate your mother with almost all of your little body), you flinch away when she tries to touch you and you don't understand how your parents can go back to normal.

Or at least, the version of normal that fits your parents.  They are cordial, always have been cordial, always will be cordial.  (They aren't in love, haven't been in love for years but it's not like they're at each other's throats, they're just comfortably cordial.)

You don't understand, but it works and your parents seem content enough with the way everything is.  They were betrothed, then married, then had a child quickly thereafter and they were stuck together.  It's not a perfect love story, nobody has those, and they're the reason you're disillusioned (with life, with love, with people).

You suppose that you understand, but how quiet (or loud, depending on the day) is nerve wracking, but becomes the norm.  It's not normal, how easily you adjust to your parents and how they aren't cold, but aren't necessarily warm.  How you become accustomed to and think it's the norm (for everyone) and how you wind up adding to the terse, cordial atmosphere by letting it define you.

Your home life isn't the best, but it isn't the worst by any stretch of the imagination.  It just isn't the best by any means.