One-Hundred Days

My family is humble, at best.

We sit around the table for dinner every night, whether it be the dinner table in the small dining room or the coffee table in the larger yet crowded living room. We speak volumes of what we think, and rather than showing things in actions, a simple look or word can bring memories out of foggy minds in an instant. My father thinks he's a failure, and feels the need to remind both my brother and I of this each and every day. My mother has been through more than even she cares to mention, and I have been through most of the same.

My mother's father died when she was around my own age, fourteen.
Mine may as well be dead to me despite his rather alive state.

We have secrets in my family, and while I'm sure most families do, ours are much larger than those of others. My family's open, sometimes to the point where you feel as if everything you say and do is being dissected by the minds of those you seem to be closest to. I have things that I have told to my friends but never my family. I could never bring a secret onto my mother, and so I keep it close to my mind but never near my heart, as it has no business belonging there.

Many people become confused about my family's situation. My father is my step-father, the one that lives with me and is the only father figure I have in my entire life. I am one of the luckier ones because of this, and yet people feel the need to remind me of this despite my very clear knowledge of the fact.
My biological father, the one who is the reason behind the secret I keep, is dead to me.
It will be a very celebrated day in my entire family when he does enter the morbid state.

Maybe this makes us a very unsympathetic crowd, but I believe it is all deserved.
My family's been through more than is mentionable, and more than anyone other than us needs to know. We have stayed together, somehow, and we have our scars that are never healing to show for everything.

My father lost his own, and seeing him cry tore me apart, it tore my mother apart, and he has never been the same since. It was less than three years ago it happened, although it seems like a decade. We have changed, and change makes time seem extended, it makes us seem older than we really are.
It makes us unique, dynamic characters in a world full of static.

We pent up our emotions in our family, and cry and scream and yell behind closed doors. Although everyone of us is constantly being asked "What's wrong?" we all keep our lips sewn shut and choose to let go of ourselves in the shelter of our solitude.
I'm the quieter one in my family, my brother is the loud and obnoxious one who is the one we go to for laughs and drama. My mother holds everything down, she's the one who will talk to you whether or not you want to listen or contribute to the conversation and she's the one who will listen to you and puts the issue of whether or not she gives a damn aside for another day. My father, is the stronghold. Despite the rule my mother has, my father is the strongest, when someone is hurt, by anyone whether in the family or not, he's the first person to have something to say.
But lately, he has been lacking, and I've been the one who's had to adopt the double-bladed tongue and sharp wit to put people in their place beneath the dirt we step on.

My family is simple at best, despite everything we have been through.
We are simple, but multi-sided. We keep our sides to ourselves, though we let them slip every now and then to prove a point.

My family is simple and humble at their best.
And they are even more beautiful when at their worst.