The ² Room ⁰ Without ¹ Windows ⁸

The floors were dark green tile,
cold and cracked,
worn by years of neglect.
The walls, a stifling navy blue,
seemed to close in tighter each day,
trapping every breath,
every thought,
every small, flickering hope.
There were no windows—
no light to break the shadows,
no view to remind me
that the world outside still existed.

The house was a tomb,
its decay spreading like a sickness.
Cluttered rooms held the weight of forgotten things,
piles of broken objects
that mirrored the brokenness of the people inside.
The air was thick,
heavy with the smell of dampness and rot,
a staleness that settled into my skin
and reminded me there was no escape.

I tried to clean,
to scrub away the filth,
but the dirt was endless.
It seeped into the cracks,
into my hands,
into my mind.
I wanted to make it livable—
for my son, for myself—
but the house rejected every effort,
as though it thrived on its own decay.

At night, the house was alive
with noise and chaos.
Voices screamed and shouted,
sharp words that cut through the dark.
Laughter echoed,
not warm or kind,
but cold, arrogant,
a sound that mocked any attempt
at peace.

And beneath it all,
there was the scratching—
rats clawing through the walls,
their movements a relentless reminder
that I wasn’t the only one trapped.
Cockroaches darted across counters,
over dishes that'd been scrubbed
as clean as they could manage.
The house wasn’t just broken;
it was hostile,
a battleground
where nothing felt safe.

There was no oven,
no way to cook a real meal.
Food was a precious commodity,
stored in plastic totes
to protect it from the rats.
But there was enough a lot of the time.
I often would go without,
letting my son eat what little we had,
while I ignored the gnawing ache in my stomach.
I was weak,
but it didn’t matter.
He had to come first.

The bedroom became our world,
a prison within a prison.
We stayed there,
hiding from the chaos outside,
trying to create a fragile bubble
of something resembling normalcy.
I tried to make it okay—
to make him laugh,
to pretend the darkness wasn’t real.
But every game,
every story,
every song I sang to drown out the yelling
felt like a lie.

Time passed without meaning.
Days blurred into nights,
and nights stretched endlessly.
Sometimes we were awake all night,
the darkness outside mirroring
the darkness within.
Other times, we slept through the day,
shielding ourselves from a world
we didn’t belong to.

The people around me—
his family—
wore their religion like armor,
hiding behind prayers
that felt like daggers.
“Pray for yourself,” they told me,
“Pray to be better for him.”
"Pray he will stop living that way."
Their words carried judgment,
each syllable a reminder
that they thought I was the problem.
I wanted so desperately to belong,
to be accepted,
to be enough for them.
But no matter what I did,
they never saw me as anything more
than a burden.

And before them,
there was my own family—
a history of hurt and neglect
that had shaped me long before this house.
Their words, their actions,
their indifference
had left scars I didn’t know how to heal.
I had been cast aside so many times
that by the time I reached this place,
I didn’t know how to stand on my own.

I tried to make everything okay.
I tried to hold the pieces together,
to smile, to laugh,
to convince myself it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
But the harder I tried,
the more I lost myself.
I became someone I didn’t recognize—
a ghost of who I had been,
adrift in a life I couldn’t escape.

And then there was him—
the man who claimed me,
used me,
and discarded me all at once.
The man who gave me the role of a wife
without the promise of love.
That night,
he sat broken before me,
his heart shattered,
not by me,
but by the absence of another.
He had fallen for someone else,
someone he thought would save him,
someone who ghosted him
the way he ghosted me
every time I needed more.

He drank and wept,
and I, hollow and tired,
held him together.
I comforted him,
listened to his words,
tried to soothe his pain.
But the truth burned in me:
I was nothing more than a placeholder,
an afterthought,
a convenience.
By the time he finally fell asleep,
I had nothing left to give.
No faith,
no strength,
no hope.

The garage was dim and hollow,
a space filled with remnants
of lives that weren’t mine.
The punching bag hung in front of me,
high from the ceiling beams,
a silent witness to the blows I’d absorbed.
I prayed one last time—
“Forgive me,” I whispered,
as I tied the rope where it hung,
my hands trembling—but sure.
I sent a final message,
a goodbye filled with love for my son,
and a plea for him to be cared for
when I no longer could.

And then—
nothing.

When I woke,
his face hovered above mine,
his voice frantic,
his hands shaking.
He saved me,
the same hands that had hurt me,
neglected me,
left me to break.

They called me selfish.
They told me I was wrong.
But they didn’t understand.
I hadn’t been alive in years.

《—¤—》

It has been years since then.
The house, the chaos,
the life I lived then—
they feel distant,
as though they belong to someone else.
But I carry the echoes with me.
Not in the forefront,
not in every moment,
but they exist—
a shadow of a life I survived.

The journey since has been quiet,
marked not only by triumphs or victories,
but by time passing,
days moving forward,
and me with them.
I don’t have answers.
I don’t have a perfect story to tell.

But I do know this:
that version of me,
the one trapped in the room without windows,
the one who tried to make everything okay
until she disappeared—
she is still a part of me.
But she is not all of me.

This is not a story of healing,
nor of strength.
It is a story of endurance,
of time passing,
of living through the unthinkable
and waking up years later,
still here.

And that is enough.

-CK 1.26.25