My small hands grip the rails.
The house is shroud in darkness, but their shouting woke me up. Their pain and anger, creating a light of it's own a light that guided me out onto the landing. I have awoken to this scene, many times before. This house so silent in the day, but shook violently awake, come the night.

I found my sister already there, looking so worried and scared. I did not even notice that she was not in the room, when I crept out.

It is, as if they, my parents, believe the darkness will deafens our ears to their fighting. But we can hear everything, my sister and me. The fear, the pain, the hatred. She always vows to leave and never come back, he screams that she needs to stay. Then the sound of his hand striking her skin, again and again and then the sobbing that follows.

We hurry quietly into our room, for fear of being discovered and beaten too.

We were thrust into this environment. There is no gentleness to be remembered, no tender moments, my earliest memories are ones of violence, and then nothing, as though my mind has been wiped clean.

Every now and again I get a glimpse of what may have been, but was that just a dream or reality?

"Do you remember that time I nearly choked you" my sister asked?

"ah no" I replied.

"Luckily mum walked in, because your face was turning blue, I had found a piece of plastic string and put it around your neck and started to choke you!" she told me.

How could I not remember that and if I had managed to block that out, what else have I managed to block? I do remember that me and my sister fought a lot, we really hurt one another, but then we were just copying our parents. We were playing out the lives of our parents, what we thought, was how adults normally behaved.

My father held such rage inside of him and I grew up in that house so scared to say a word to him. Scared to say the wrong thing, so the easiest option was to say nothing at all.

At the age of 12 my mother brings me to a speech therapist, I have difficulty pronouncing my R's and Sh's. When I was smaller it was cute, but at 12 years of age it is embarrassing. The older kids in my school, love to taunt and tease me about it. They always have me in tears on the bus home.

The speech therapist tells my mum that it is quiet common for some kids to have difficulty with pronouncing certain letters and that she should not worry, as she will have me speaking properly in no time. But there is a reason why I can not say those sounds, why my speech has not fully developed. But no one looks into it, because no one cares.

There has been days where I was kept home from school, not because I am physically sick, but because of the bruises.

There are too many secrets in my home, too many words that have not been spoken and too many things that have gone unnoticed.

For so many years, I was too scared to raise my voice, whether was to express my joy or my pain. So terrified to be myself. It was always easier to appear weak and defeated, in the hope that I would go unnoticed. Oh how I wished I was invisible, how, on so many occasions I wished the ground would just swallow me up, so that I could spend my days underground. Anything, but continue to live this way.

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