Chapter 1 - Childhood(Part 1)
I was sitting on the floor when I heard the slap. It wasn’t just a sound—it was like thunder crashing inside my head. The room froze for a moment. I could feel my heart pounding, but I couldn’t move. My father had hit my mother. Her face turned red, and the outline of his hand was clear on her cheek. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She just stood there, head down, like she had learned to expect this.
Nancy, my sister, sat next to me, gripping my hand so hard it hurt. But I didn’t pull away. We both sat there, staring at our mother, too scared to do anything. My dad was drunk again. The smell of alcohol hung around him like a fog, so thick it made me want to throw up. He didn’t care. He spat on the floor before stumbling out of the room.
“Why did he hit you, ma?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. I was still staring at her cheek, waiting for her to answer. “He’s drunk, beta,” she said quietly, her voice shaking but soft. She tried to smile, but it looked wrong, forced. “Let’s eat dinner. Don’t think about it.”
We sat at the table, but the food tasted like ash in my mouth. My mother acted like nothing had happened, but I knew it wasn’t true. Nancy didn’t say a word. She was always quiet after things like this. We finished dinner, but I could barely eat. I kept thinking about what I had seen, about how powerless we all were.
Later that night, I went to my room, but I couldn’t stop replaying the moment in my head. The sound of the slap, the look on my mother’s face—it wouldn’t go away. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering why this was happening to us. Why was our family like this? Why didn’t anyone stop him?
In the dark, Nancy spoke. Her voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear her. “Maddy,” she whispered, “what if we ran away? You, me, and ma. We could leave him.” I turned to look at her. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she wasn’t joking. “Where would we go?” I asked my heart heavy. “What about ma’s job? What about school?” There was a long silence before Nancy replied. “I don’t know. I was just thinking... maybe we’d be happier without him.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to agree with her, but deep down, I knew we couldn’t run away. We were trapped here, stuck in this nightmare with no way out. “Go to sleep,” she whispered, her voice small. “Forget I said anything.” I didn’t forget. I lay there, thinking about it, wondering if things would ever change.
January 1st, 2028
It’s been many years, but that night still feels like it happened yesterday. The memory of my father slapping my mother is stuck in my mind. The way his hand hit her cheek, the sound was so loud, like thunder. The whole house went quiet, as if time had stopped. My mother didn’t cry, though. She never did. She just stood there with her head down, holding back her tears like she always did. It’s like she believed if she didn’t show any emotion, things wouldn’t get worse. But I always wondered if that was true. If she had cried or screamed, would he have stopped? Or would he have hit her again?
Sometimes, I think about what life could have been like if my father wasn’t like that. If he wasn’t always angry and violent. What if he was a kind dad who came home after work, hugged my mother, and told us he loved us? What if he wasn’t drunk all the time, shouting and breaking things? Would our lives be different? But I’ll never know. The kind of father I wished for doesn’t exist. And thinking about it too much only makes me feel worse.
Today is January 1st, a new year. People always talk about new beginnings, about making resolutions and trying to change their lives. But honestly, I don’t think any of that really matters. Life doesn’t change just because you make a list of things you want to do better. Life changes when it wants to, and it’s not usually in a good way.
Still, I’ve decided to start writing things down this year. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I feel like I need to let it all out, to make sense of everything that’s happened and everything that keeps happening. It feels like all these thoughts are too much for my mind to hold on to. Maybe writing will help.
So, a little about me. My name is Madonna, but most people call me Maddy. I’m 26 years old, and I work at a tech company. My job is fine, I guess, but it’s not something I’m passionate about. Most days feel the same—wake up, go to work, come back home, sleep, and repeat. It’s like I’m just going through the motions, floating through life without really living. I’ve felt like this for as long as I can remember. Even when I was a kid, I was always looking for a way to escape the darkness that seemed to hang over our house.
Being a dark-skinned woman in India doesn’t help either. People say they don’t care about your skin color, but they do. They really do. They might not say it directly to your face, but they still make comments, they still look at you differently. I can feel it when they whisper or glance at me. “She’s pretty, but imagine how much prettier she would be if her skin were lighter.” I hear it, and it hurts every time. It makes you feel like no matter what you do, your skin will always be the first thing people see, the first thing they judge.
My sister Nancy doesn’t have to deal with this. She’s light-skinned and beautiful. People always admire her and say how lucky she is to have such fair skin. And me? I’m always the one standing next to her, feeling invisible. People compare us all the time, even when they don’t mean to. They’ll say something nice about her, then glance at me as if I’m not good enough. It’s like I’m not really there, like I don’t matter. And it hurts. There were so many days when I felt jealous of Nancy, wishing I had her skin color, wishing my life was easier like hers. But no matter how hard I wish, nothing changes. This is the skin I was born with, and I can’t change it.
But this year, I’m trying to stop letting their words control me. I’m tired of caring about what they think. It’s exhausting to keep feeling like I’m not good enough because of the way I look. I know it’s not going to be easy to ignore what people say or how they treat me, but I have to try. I have to learn to live for myself.
It’s strange how life can make you so tough. When I was younger, I used to dream about being someone else, someone who didn’t have to deal with all this pain. I wanted to be someone who didn’t have to carry the weight of a broken home or the judgment of society. But now, I realize that I am who I am, and I can’t change that. My skin color isn’t something I can control, and I have to stop letting it define me.
Surviving is something I’ve always had to do. Growing up in a house where my father’s anger and violence were normal, I learned to be strong. My father wasn’t the type of man who made you feel safe. Every time he came home drunk, my sister Nancy and I would hide. The fear in the house was like a heavy blanket, covering everything. It was so thick, we could hardly breathe. We knew that the tiniest thing could set him off. Sometimes he’d just shout, other times he’d hit my mother or break things around the house. It didn’t matter what we did; we were always scared.
Even when I’m far away from that house now, the fear never leaves me. It’s like a shadow that follows me wherever I go. I feel it when I hear loud noises or when someone raises their voice. It’s always there, lurking in the background, reminding me of the things I’ve seen, of the life I grew up with.
My mother stayed with my father through all of it. Even when he hurt her, she stayed. I used to wonder why she didn’t leave, why she didn’t take us and run away from him. But now, I think I understand. She didn’t know how to leave. She felt trapped, like she had no choice. Maybe she thought staying was the only way to protect us, even though staying meant she had to suffer.
I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to stay in a situation that breaks me down. I’ve seen what that kind of life does to a person, and I don’t want it for myself. I don’t want to live in fear of someone else’s anger.
I don’t know what this year will bring. Maybe things will get better, or maybe they won’t. But I’m going to keep writing. I’ll write down everything—the good, the bad, the painful. Maybe one day, when I look back on these words, I’ll see how far I’ve come. Or maybe, I’ll still be stuck in the same place. I don’t know. All I can do is survive and keep going, one day at a time.
That’s all I’ve ever known how to do.
