I can't remember the last time I had an actual conversation with my mom. Every time I get off the phone after trying to talk to her, a deep sense of gloomy melancholy settles over me. My whole body aches from the throbbing of my heart that was surprised at the coarseness of the interaction I had with her. In my family, there is no conversation. When I don't say anything, they go on and on, with no stopping until I try to jump into their long-winded and vicious discourse on why I am in the wrong. Each and every time we start out happy and end in disheartening screams that just tear my heart out.

Missing home and wanting to be home are two different things. This I learned on my first break spent at home after starting college. The dynamics of my family is the same as when I was in high school. As was in middle school. As ever I can remember.

The verbal abuse I have to go through every meal has been getting worse and my brain is shocked every time at the things that can come out of my own father. While calling me his princess when happy, he does not hesitate to call me other names which leave me incredulous at hearing such things. Is this what other families are like too? I wish for a family where everything that happens is like the unchanging slow-moving ocean waves on a moderate day, not storms followed by burning hot sunny days.

As my brain slowly absorbs what has happened, I slowly try to impose on myself a sense of calm to prepare for tomorrow's classes. Yet I cannot. How can I? I feel like crying out all the turmoils inside of me, to reach someone, to talk to someone. To whom, though? The friends I have made at college are not the kind that I can discuss this type of problems with comfortably. Most of my friends from high school have shunned me, in their own right, and the few I have left are slowly drifting away from me.

Where should I start from? When I think of one thing, my brain immediately makes multiple associations to other seemingly irrelevant things, leaving my thoughts in disarray.

Yes, I know, I will start from the very beginning. When I was enthusiastic about everything and wanted to live a full life. When I was unaware of the changes to come.