Hidden Within

Life can hit you with the strangest of obstacles and difficulties, and I was expecting a lot of bad stuff ever since our last travel. We had to change cities, my family which is my parents, 3 siblings, and I. It was really one of the worst results of lifelong decisions which weren't particularly wrong, but weren't correct either.

Anyways, the amount of troubles and mental stress kept on accumulating, especially since we had to live with the worst human being of all time, my grandma, dad's mom, she really is a devil in disguise. While my siblings could kinda live through with it by expressing their hatred openly, I couldn't, I kept a strong and loving act all the time, which was slowly eating me inside. Mom had some health issues as well which wasn't ideal. My older brother and sister started working so they were able to escape the house's stressful atmosphere and my younger sister being kinda oblivious and spoiled didn't really have as much of a trouble coping. That's where I come, while I am the one who helps the most around the house this devil loves to mess around with me. I didn't say anything nor complain for two reasons: she's still dad's mom, so I can't just disrespect her out of respect for him, and if I stopped being in the front, mom would start facing her s**t, she already had enough with her illness and I didn't wish to see her suffer more.

I basically worked myself like a servant for the sake of the atmosphere in the house. Inside I was only getting stressed more and more. And for some reason I started getting blamed for a lot of things, it started with my grandma who'd blame me for breaking something, or a dead plant that died because I didn't water it even though it's not my job, leaving lights on when I wasn't in that room, or even not cleaning properly when I wasn't even cleaning! and my dad obviously believed her not me and so he joined in on the act. I'd try to fix something broken but fail, I get scolded. I help him fixing something and it doesn't work out with him, I am to blame. And the list just goes on. Then slowly my siblings started participating in these shenanigans which really frustrated me, I'd tried defending myself in a couple of occasions which I always lost, their most used sentence 'only those guilty would defend like you do.'. So again, I decided not to say anything to keep things peaceful which was eating me inside out even worse.

I was hating staying in the house day after day, but I was enduring everything for mom. She used to defend me in multiple occasions, but when I saw that that was dividing the family sort of, I asked her to stop. To just leave them be as I started acting unbothered by any of their words just to convince her. All for the sake of the two reasons, her health, as she was seriously ill, and our family. I didn't want to be a reason for some hatred or something. So I just swallow everything inside me and vent them away by walking alone and listening to songs.

I'd firmly believed deep down that things will brighten up, but I wished that they would brighten faster with each passing day.

Mom would notice every now and then how I'd be a bit down and try to comfort me but to no avail, I act that I'm okay already but I never was. The only thing that could comfort me at that point is for Grandma to disappear as soon as possible. Then the blames would gradually drop I thought. Which brings us to today, my first week of my fourth year in university.

When I started university I thought I'd be in for the happiest days of my life. First two years went kinda well. I was one of the most cheerful and positive guys you could meet. I was on good terms with almost everyone, but had very few close friends, I had lots of fun, I excelled at most subjects and was in a close fight for first in the course, and I returned to playing basketball regularly. I had a friend who I shared a lot of stuff with, most importantly our love for cars and racing. I was genuinely enjoying life. Although I was rather quiet unless we were talking about cars. As I was a bit on the introverted side.

But things started changing in my third year, that's when problems really rose up in the house, I had started narrowing down my friends after discovering that most of them were trying to use me to benefit off of me, my cheerfulness was more forced, I was changing inside and had to keep acting like the old me.