Me and my little sisters. Langston, Cara, Camille. Our mother has left to go to work yet another shift at the pretentious clothing store in the mall. I sit in my room, alone as usual, enjoying the nothingness that accompanies summertime. I alternate between meaningless games on my xbox and meaningless videos on my phone as the day buzzes on, when the strained peace of this lazy morning is brutally interrupted by a fearsome sound- my angry father. That man doesn’t scare me in person, but his yelling voice still inspires a childish distress in my mind. He must be mad at one of the girls. Or heaven forbid, them both. My mother never got so riled up at them. She would yell sometimes, but not so much, or so recklessly. Now she is off making a life for herself, newly free from the restraints of homemaking, and the rest of us. The screams of reprimand shake the house again, and I know I’ll have to go out there to save my sisters from it. I open my door, its signature creak heralding my entrance into the land of the living. I immediately see Cara, the older of the two, sitting in her time-out spot. Typical. I ask her what she did to earn her time on the doormat. She replies with a wide, big-toothed smile. I stare at her, unmoving for a few seconds, then go to find Camille. She's standing on the couch, bursting with a vigorous energy that I envy, while my phone-bound father sits on one of the chairs opposite her, yelling without looking up from his iphone/enslavement device for her to get down. As I scoop Camille off the couch, I think about how my life is essentially the American dream. We have everything we want, right? Phones, food, a internet connection that doesn’t entirely suck. I move on from my cynicism, determined to let my sisters see that yelling isn’t all they’re worth. I glance at the clock. Noon. Still multiple hours before mom comes back. I’ll have to fill them somehow.

We begin with cleaning. Cara will wipe down the counters, Camille will sweep the floors, and I will do the dishes. As we work, I try to guide them the right way, knowing that mom would teach them better, but dad wouldn’t have them do anything. We finish, have a snack and go outside. I hate sitting in the white rays of the sun, but it’s technically healthy for the three of us, which is the only reason why I’m doing it. I sit on the swings in my backyard, next to Cara. I begin to plan out the rest of our day. We’ll make lunch, maybe. Then we can… read? Whatever. I’ll figure it out.
As the day progresses, my sisters and I kill time in new and exciting ways, all the while with me in my own thoughts (as usual). While lost in my mind, I think about how helpless I feel to let my sisters feel like somebody cares. That’s the one thing that people need, above even air, in their lives. I also know tons of people who never get it. They take their damaged souls into the world, where they can do nothing else but starve for love and damage the souls of others, who continue this cycle until someone (like me, to be candid) decides to carry the hurt in their heads, not their actions. I refuse to let my sisters be another one of those emotional vampires. They will hurt themselves and others, and I need their futures to be better than that.
As I separate myself from my inner woes and future goals, I see that mom is on her way home, according to the clock. She can fix the damage done here today, right? I then see that, for the first time in my life, I care about my family. I actually love them. Before this summer, they were roommates that paid for my life. They were necessary obstacles in my life. I had been using the word love for them as a required title, not to communicate how I felt about them. However now, my decrepit emotions are stirred at the thought of the five of them, and I’m okay with this. Probably.
The garage opens, and mom’s car roars in. Myself, my sisters, my brother and my dad all take inaudible sighs of strained relief, knowing that we made it through another day. She opens the door and we all come at her with a stormy “Hi, mom!” She smiles back and gives a low “Hi everyone”.  She’s carrying bags from the mall she works in, apparently making good use of the new income she’s been leaving us to earn. I see how distant she’s grown from the young, spartan-like survivor that she was in youth, that she was when I was a child. I am sad, because she is my closest friend. Even while I know nothing of her, she knows every intimate detail of my existence. I now see a woman who knows what she has to do to get success, but is held back by a man content with his situation and four children with enough potential to fill a future to the brim, but who don’t like to try for anything. It’s a shame such a person is bound to the five of us.
  The rest of the night is easy. Mom is here, what is there to worry about? I sit, watching TV with everyone, not too interested in what’s happening. I’m thinking about how similar I am to other people, how anti-unique I really am. This makes me sad. I used to think in my mind that I was so separate from everybody, but now see that I’m just the same. This must have something to do with my realization that I love my family. I get up, because I'm tired of being sad, and I can use the delicious opiate of online games to calm my nerves. I get up, and don’t stop thinking of my family the whole time I sit in front of my TV and shoot imaginary enemies.
I lay in bed, after the internet shuts off for the night, thinking in a crude meditative state under the thin thready blanket. I think of how my day went, then how I wish my dad would just calm down, and also of how much I think but don’t ever say, and not just today, but in my whole life. I remember my stream of thought where I found that I wasn’t that unique. I search for a feeling to connect to it, but again find nothing.  The disinterest that I felt for my family, I now feel within myself, for myself. I fall into sleep, thinking of everything except Langston Lounsbury.
A final thought, before this essay is finished and you forget the majority of it (hopefully not on purpose). In my life, I’ve paid for every goodness, it seems, with an equal and opposite darkness. This darkness, in this specific piece, was the yelling and the fear derived from it. I used it to pay for the freedom from my mother. But usually the darkness is my own self-scolding. I think (which as you know by now is my secret talent) about the multitude of ability and potential bestowed on me, and feel it wasted by my inability to rise to action. This story, about the summer I decided to love my family, is the only time I ever did rise to action in any real way. Not noticeable, but surely real. It’s maybe a sign that I can be more one day. Maybe.