cold and quiet by carissa song

Family has never been an easy topic for me to think or write about. I've never had much of a relationship with my family at all.

My parents have always been standoffish around my brother and me. I don't think they ever learned to love, not even each other.

My brother is 17, a junior, and lives in the same house as me, yet I haven't had a conversation with him in years.

My mother's mission is to control every aspect of my life, which I understand is a typical complaint from a teenager, but it's still difficult to live in a house where every conversation leads to how I'm not doing well enough in school or how mental health isn't real and that right now, schoolwork takes priority over my own well-being. My mother criticizes everything I try to talk to her about, and it has driven an irreparable wedge between us that's been growing since I was very young. She moved to the United States from an entirely different type of life, and simply doesn't understand what a normal teenager's life is like, because she never had one herself.

I never was sure how to process the emotion I felt towards my family as a young child. I know now that the word for it is resentful, towards my home for not providing the support and unconditional love that everyone else seemed to get. In my house crying is weakness. Showing emotion is a waste of time so why was I doing it?

My father isn't home much. He works long hours, leaving the house at 4 am and often not coming home until 9, 10, or 11 at night. His work is high-profile and brings in a lot of money, for which I'm obviously grateful. I've never doubted that my parents work hard to support us and give us all the opportunities they can. I've simply never had time to get to know my dad as a person. Sometimes he tries to protect me from my mom, but they don't understand each other.

I go looking for my validation and attention elsewhere. I find it easily. None of this gets said inside my house.

As a result, my house is always cold and quiet. Nobody talks, because there's nothing to say. Daily fights are forgotten but never really forgiven. I am by no means ungrateful, I'm just frustrated that I'll never really have a place to call home in Sparta, New Jersey.

the only picture I have of family is with my cousins haha