The baby is wailing. There are baby bottles and toys all over the floor. You step on them, yelling in pain. You eye your baby and he’s yelling because he has a dirty diaper and you aren’t quick enough.

He starts crying more because he hates when you change his diaper. The TV’s blaring and the phone starts to ring.

“Max, can you answer the phone?” you yell

He scrunches his eyebrows, and stomps. He doesn’t like taking breaks from video gaming.

Your other baby starts crying & screaming, because his older uncle, that’s 6, won’t give him a toy he wants. You run to put him in time out, and by the time you’re done, your baby took off his diaper.

The telephone is still ringing.

No one’s listening to you. Your own sons you dropped out of high school when you only had two more years to go, already hit you. Your younger brother tells you frequently

“You’re not the boss of me. You don’t live here anymore. It’s better when you’re gone.”

You want everything to stop spinning. For everything to be still. Your heads pounding and your ready to explode.

“SHUT UP!” you scream, overpowering the noise. You go on for five minutes, telling them about your pain. The pain that’s so deep inside you. You don’t know what do. You just everything to be okay, and if there could be silence for one minute, that would make it a little better.

They stop and stare at you, and for a second, things seem okay.

“You’re not the boss of me” is soon repeated by your younger brother.

You want to pull are your hair and feel sorry for yourself, but you have a diaper to put back on.

Your mom comes home from work, and she’s as exhausted as you are.

“como una chingada” she yells, throwing her arms in the air and throwing dishes while she tries to wash them. You swear, in a moment, her veins are going to explode.

She rants about the house. How it’s never clean, and how dirty you and your damn kids manage to make it. She tells you how bad of a mother you are.

The words stab you one by one.

“I’m leaving” you sad. Not looking at her.

You gather up your screaming kids. You slap them every now and than, but that only makes them cry harder and slap you back. You worried about gas money. You barley have enough to make it through the day. Let’s not worry about that until tomorrow.

You gave up high school for this. You have given up a future of maybe, being a history teacher like you always wanted, for this.

So people can rant about how stupid you are. So people can laugh about you and use you as a bad example.

You have to make sure you get to the babysitter’s on time, because you have work an hour later. You call your family, hoping they can help, until one reluctantly agrees. You work your night shift and sleep restlessly for a couple hours. Now your kid’s screaming. He wants his mommy.

Thoughts of suicide lurk through your mind. Thoughts of dying lonely because you’re fat and have stretch marks all over you and your kids will eventually take on their own lives. You want to walk around with a bag covered over your head, and maybe just close your eyes and imagine you were someone else.

You think about your mom’s house.

How all you wanted was family time and how that never happened. You spend your time working, and with your kids, your friends don’t even bother to call you about parties anymore.

You just turned twenty.



But you pushed that aside.

You’re still alive. You still kept your kids and you knew it wasn’t going to be easy. You knew from the start. From when your mother slammed the door on you’re faced and told you “tell him to take care of you”. How he had many girls to “take care of” and not just you. How he left you.


You are strong.

You think maybe, next week, I’ll take all the kids to the lake, and bake cookies. If things go wrong that’s okay, they’ll mean more once their perfect.

“I’m scared that you’ll never be happy”, your little sister tells you.

“I will someday” you tell her.

She smiles and tries to cheer you up by saying how great your children will be. How they’ll pay for your trips to Rome or Greece, and love you unconditionally.

You smile.

No matter what, you won’t stop chasing that light, no matter how dark it gets.