A Quiet World

It’s not the cold that haunts me the most. It’s the muffled silence of the snow. 

The absence of sound roaring down into my eardrums. The shrill scream of my unending thoughts. The metal weight of muted bombs crashing into my body. I am fighting in a silent war—a war so silent nobody can hear. That just means that the bombs, the airplanes, the machine guns, the bullets—they can all penetrate through me however many times they want. That just means more pain, less help. Eternal suffering. 

I breathe. My footsteps have vanished behind me. The snow falls harder, and the wind scratches my fragile cheeks. As I move on, each foot sinking into the deep white, the snow stops. 

I am trapped in an endless cave without exits. I let out a sound from my lips. My voice echoes. I crouch down onto the soft ground, letting the white snow slip through my fingertips. It is cold, colder than the touch of my father’s hand, but more than that, it is silent. I wince at the soundlessness because I cannot stand to listen to my thoughts drown me, to suffocate in the heaviness of my brain.

Amid the earsplitting throb of silence, I hear a shuffle behind me. I whip around, and there is nothing. I turn back and stare at the infinite white. 

White. White is my least favorite color of all. I despise everything white–thick stacks of cream white paper, hospital walls, my father’s ill face, his pills, snow. I detest how I am forced to live forever in a country of white, in a place where it snows for more than half the year. Everything around me is dyed this color I hate so much, this color that comes with pain and suffering and regret. 

But for now, I stand, surrounded by white. Big flakes drift onto my lashes, my lips, my nose, and my cheeks. I almost cry out in pain—pain from memories flooding back into my mind. I hear another shuffle—this time, right behind me, and closer, too—and I turn around quickly. I look up, very slowly, from the snowy ground. I look up, and it breaks my heart. I look up, and I realize that I have become so lost in this world, this world that has given me pain and pain only. 

In front of me, at the very end of the tunnel’s exit, stands my father. I blink once, twice, and he doesn’t disappear. And suddenly, I am drowning—drowning in a blackhole of the past, struggling to keep breathing when really I just want to sink to the bottom and let myself rest for once. 

My father raises his hand, and instinctively, I recoil. I shouldn’t have done that because now his cold eyes turn hard, and he slowly steps toward me, each foot steadily stepping onto the deep snow. His truck keys ring loud, and I can no longer stay standing. But I  also notice the pleasure that lies when the silence is disrupted—that my thoughts are no longer shrieking in their high-pitched voices, demanding and confronting. 

“I’m sorry,” I try to whisper as he nears me. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.” I beg, and I cry, and I apologize. Even so, he continues closing in on me, and by the time I close my eyes, it is already too late—I feel the wind whooshing upon me as he raises his hand and punches my face, as his heavy boots find my ribs again and again and again, and as he puts in all his strength into hurting me, into paining his own daughter to death. 

I prepare my body for pain, pain that I have gotten used to after all these years with him. Pain that I once was so terrified of, but now—now relish in. Pain that is far more pleasurable compared to the silence.  

When I open my eyes, he is gone. All is quiet, as if nothing happened. I breathe, struggling for air, struggling to return to equilibrium. I gasp, and I realize my father is long gone, that he is in his lonely grave, dead. I sigh, and I think that although my father may be dead, buried deep down in the dirt, unable to move,  that is not enough to calm me.  I widen my eyes and look around, but I am surrounded by nothingness–by snow, by white. By silence. I cannot help but to feel slightly disappointed, and I am disgusted at myself. 

  He used to love me. He used to treat me like I was his daughter, like he was a caring father who wished the best for me. But then he got drunk, he became an addict, and he became sick. He went in and out and in and out of the hospital, multiple times, until his organs couldn’t take it anymore. 

The first time he hit me was when my mother died. I had cried and wept and locked myself in my room for days afterwards. Then there was a second time, then a third, and a fourth, and then I wasn’t counting anymore. 

The snow begins falling heavier, each flake echoing the silence. 

I miss my father. I miss the pain, I think to myself. I miss his hard hits, his judging face and snake eyes. I miss home.  

But I don’t go back, I keep floating through the amorphous snow, in search of someplace I belong.