Yelling, kitchen cabinet doors slamming. Faces hot red with anger. Hands flailing in wild emotional description. I hold the hand of my little sister, my baby sister on my hip. We watch them argue for several minutes. They turn around and see us standing there. The sudden look of dismay washes over the both of them. Too young to know what this meant, my sisters and I just stood frozen, staring. Tears rolled down my sisters cheeks, tiny hand stuck in her mouth.

“Rylee, go get your clothes on. Get ready for school. You two, back in bed. It’s early.”

That was just it. It was early. What could you possibly have to argue about? I did what I was told. Daddy tucked the girls back in bed and Momma came in the bathroom to pull my hair up. I still remember how she angrily yanked the brush through my hair. My head bobbled around and knocked against her stomach. She left and I heard the distant rumble of another argument. When it blew up, I was sitting outside on the doorstep. It was chilly, bitterness rested in the air.

I called to my cat, Rolly Polly. He ran around the side of the painted blue-grey trailer and crawled into my arms, rubbing his soft face against mine. Hot tears were racing now. I was scared, confused, and hurt. As I sat outside and time ticked past, I realized I was also forgotten about. The school bus would stop any minute now at the end of our long driveway. And I wouldn’t be there.

Just then Daddy came out of the house. Face twisted with hurt. His heart was heavy, I knew. But the moment he saw his baby crying, he dropped everything and kneeled down.

“Why are you crying?”

“Momma and you are fighting.”

“Yeah. But that doesn’t mean you have to cry. Momma and me will be just fine. We always are,” he pushed back my hair. “We gotta get you to school. You’re about to miss the bus.”

We stood and he helped me with my book bag. We ran down the driveway just in time to hear the bus pulling hard around the trees. It swished to a stop, and Daddy hugged me goodbye. I hugged him tight and smiled with a wave goodbye. I situatied myself on the bus and looked back and Daddy who was now on his way back up the driveway.

It wasn’t until nearly five years later that I was told what happened that day. When my Momma found the pills Daddy took for his diabetes and blood. The ones she’d argued for so hard. Then she emptied the container and waited for him to come back. And how later that evening she found a gun in the bedroom while packing her bags, followed her feet outside, into the scampy woods behind the house. And how she ended her life with one bullet, one mistake, and quick thinking.

How Daddy found her and cried for so long. And how it tore the family into two divided pieces. How the ambulances and policemen questioned him only to find a strong man who could cry too.

I see myself, as I get older now, how I look just like my Momma. How I see her eyes in the shape of my own. I know I too have struggled with suicidal thoughts. But I promise my kids, when they get here, that I will never, ever leave them. It was too hard for me and it’s scarred me for life. Most of my writing stems from that. From it I’ve even developed a more severe case of OCD as well. I’m doing excercises to slowly pull those urges away, but it’s something I and my future family will have to dance around.

To this day, I’m still scarred with the sensitivity to adults arguing. Yelling makes me shrink away, I shake and get nauseous. I’ve learned to always keep a hair tie around my wrist. This way, I can take it off and fidget with it. And if I forget the tie, I find myself digging my nails into my flesh until it bleeds, or peeling the skin from around my nails up. I’ll scratch up and down my arms until they’re swollen and red.

Not all parents realize what their parenting does for a child. Nor do they see how what they do in life impacts their children. Only those who have been close enough to see or go through the toll understand how it forever changes and -in some cases- determines who and what that child grows up to be.