My second ‘coffee thoughts’ post is brewing now! This one’s a little darker. It’s something I’ve needed to write about for a while but have been putting off.

I’m going back to the books on the nightstand, and moving from the bottom of the pile to second-book status.

Being the bottom book on the pile felt like the slow warping of the floor in an old house. I knew it was happening, and could see myself shifting in ways that weren’t normal.

I started to shrink into myself, hoping that making myself less would stop the shifting, stop the yelling, and stop me from feeling like I had to be incredibly still every time something didn’t go the right way.

This hiding affected more than just the way I interacted with my own space and home. It shrunk my dreams, my personality, and my belief that I was worth more.

Gone were the days of grad school, because how would I concentrate with incessant yelling and slamming–of drawers, Xbox controllers, my heart hammering around every time things got scary?

I stopped being as silly, because who knew when something would be determined as ‘stupid,’ and most certainly not funny? Wittiness doesn’t come easy when going home feels like a corset being pulled to the tightest setting.

“But it’s like this at times for everyone, isn’t it?” I’d think to myself while lying in bed, trying to convince myself that things weren’t *that* bad (which to this day, I know others have worse experiences). That I could be happy in this life. That I could somehow flourish if I just tried hard enough and was more understanding, because obviously this was due to what I was doing.

One of the hardest things is that there were also good times. Walking through the door didn’t always feel like the corset strings were pulled tight, tighter, tightest. Sometimes there were giggles, dinners made together with smiles. But it never lasted long, and the good definitely didn’t outweigh the bad.

It’s difficult to see how altered I was, the warped floor almost caving in the whole house. I decided it was best to sell that house, with all its cracks, the leaky toilet, the dripping ceiling. There wasn’t going to be a renovation that could save it, and that’s okay.

*Note: my next post will be brighter, promise. Please reach out for help, call someone, and break your silence if you related to this post. You deserve better.