Behind the Smile

In this house, silence wasn’t peace—it was a cold war fought in the kitchen and the hallways. At twelve, I had been drafted as the unofficial border guard. Being the “sensitive” middle child was just a poetic way of saying I was the one who had to catch the grenades my parents threw at each other before they hit the floor.

My mum was brilliant but drowning. She ran a business that was supposed to be our foundation, but my dad was a thief of our security. He drove a sleek Mercedes and a roaring Porsche—shiny metal trophies bought with money that should have been our future. Instead, he starved the family of funds, leaving Mum with barely anything to cover the lives of four private school students. When Mum finally saw through the lies and confronted him, Dad simply denied it with the shrug of a coward.

Now, the house was a freezer. Mum, at forty-two, spent her nights hunched over biology and physiology textbooks, her eyes red-rimmed under the desk lamp. She was frantically trying to pass the grueling conversion exams required to transfer her professional license overseas. It was her only way to secure a skilled visa, her desperate attempt to build a bridge to Australia so she could carry her children across the ocean to escape the toxic air.

But while the bridge was being built, the children were rotting from the inside out. My eldest sister had transformed into a sullen, mean alien. My ten-year-old brother had become a ticking time bomb, taking our dad’s shadows out on our youngest sister. And my littlest sister, at only five, was breaking the fastest. She bore the brunt of Mum’s mounting pressure; sometimes, when the stress of the “bridge” and the exams became too much, Mum’s hands grew heavy. I watched my tiny sister and feared that by the time we reached a new shore, there wouldn’t be enough of the little girl left to save.

Then there was me—the twelve-year-old girl who simply disconnected.

Dad and his side of the family treated my body like a public debate. “You’re getting fat,” they’d say. I didn’t actually care about my weight, but I wondered why they felt the need to pierce me with it so often. Dad called me “stupid” and an “idiot” because my grades were slipping. He didn’t realize that my brain was just slamming the door shut so I wouldn’t have to hear him anymore, assuming I was too thick to understand the sting of being dismissed.

He even tried to own my hair. I hated giving in, hated cutting it or styling it just to stay in his “good books” for a few hours of quiet. I hated my glasses, and I hated the mountain of homework at school that I was too exhausted to even touch.

At school, I hid behind the smile. I wore a flawless fake mask, playing the part of the “cheerful” one perfectly. But underneath, the world felt completely ridiculous. I watched the handsome boy who used to be my boyfriend walking with a “perfect” girl—the same one he had cheated on me with—and it felt like a slap in the face. It wasn’t even just jealousy; it was the sudden, heavy realization of how fake and cruel everything truly was.

On top of it all, my heart ached for my maternal grandmother. She was fading, and I was terrified that the only person who truly saw me would be gone before the bridge to Australia was finished.

When the walls felt like they were closing in, I would retreat to the backyard with the dog. Out there, the cruel labels—“stupid,” ribbons of “fat,” or being the “messenger”—finally fell away. I would look up at the sky and speak to the only Father who didn’t let me down. I held onto my faith in Jesus like a life vest, choosing to believe this was a lesson, a brutal forging of inner strength.

In the backyard, my mask finally fell off. I would sit in the grass, breathing the quiet air, waiting for the day the reality of our lives finally shifted toward the sea.