About

My life has always been dark, and I've never known comfort. My mother left home when I was still in kindergarten, and my father would come home every day clutching a bottle, drowning in alcohol. There were more days spent cleaning up shards of broken glass than days when anything in the house remained intact. As a young child, I couldn't even cry. Crying didn't change a thing. I envied the friends who went straight home after school. To me, home wasn't a place to rest; it was a suffocating prison. So, I tried to survive by any means. As soon as I entered high school, I looked for every part-time job I could find. Loading and unloading trucks at dawn, scrubbing grills at barbecue joints, washing dishes at seafood restaurants, night shifts at factories. I didn't care if my body broke down. Because I had a dream. A dream that one day I would escape this hellish house and live like a human being. But reality always caught up to me faster than my dreams. When I got paid, overdue utility bills were waiting, and after paying for living expenses, I only had a few dozen dollars left in my hand. While my friends were preparing for college entrance exams, I was worrying about next month's rent. Still, I endured. I believed that if I just held on, things would get better someday. But the world isn't a place that rewards you for your efforts. I realized I wasn't living; I was just enduring the time it took to crumble. Even so, unable to die, I endured another day. Not because of hope that tomorrow might be better, but because I didn't even have the courage to end it today. And so, without anyone's salvation or comfort, I continued to walk through the endless darkness. Like someone born with a yoke called misfortune around their neck from the very start.