I sat on the pink and blue speckled carpet of my older sister’s room. She and I sat in there together. I was about five at the time, and I loved hanging out with my sister. She is five years older than me, and as a kid, she was always so good at coming up with games that would send my young imagination running. We’d run around in dress up costumes, carrying our American Girl Dolls in and out of the playhouse in the backyard. 

Though at this particular time, we weren’t playing. Like so many other evenings, we were cowering in her room. Tears stung our tan little cheeks as we listened to our dad scream at our mom somewhere upstairs. I sat, curled up on the floor fearing that the fight would make its way downstairs, hating it, hating him. 

“The day I turn eighteen, I’m moving out of here,” my sister said to me, with indignance in her voice. I agreed. 

That concept would stick with me a long time, the dream of one day being able to break free from my dad’s roaring temper. I finally did it, little me. We’re free now. Kind of. That anxiety that he created and nurtured in the pit of my stomach is still there, still haunting me. It’s like the sound of someone screaming far away. You hate it, you try to shove it out of your head, but it’s there, bearing down on you, threatening to come downstairs and swallow you up.