EPTMax could not understand why his parents never got along. Every day was another fight. Every night was another torturous ceremony of listening to his parents yell at each other for hours. They never thought he could hear them. But he heard them clear as day. He heard the anguish in his mother's forlorn voice. He heard the anger and feelings of betrayal from his fathers stern tone. Max wanted his parents to get along. He wanted his life to be normal, but no matter how much he wished, he never got what he wanted.
The fights had started out when Max was five. At first they were based on mundane things, like who was going to pick up his older sister from his friends, or who was going to cook dinner that night. However as the months went on the fights gradually grew more and more fierce, until his parents were fighting about everything. They would scream for hours, until one of them would eventually grow tired and leave. Max could no longer count how many times his father had stayed in a hotel. He could not remember how many of his soccer games his parents had missed. The day when his mother had forgotten to pick him up from his soccer practice was when Max realized that something needed to change. His mother had been too busy fighting with his father over bills to even remember to pick her son up. Max had finally let loose that night. He remembered the conversation to go somewhat along the lines of this:
Take a deep breath. Now or never he had thought to himself.
"Mom, I want to talk…"
"Sure honey, whats going on?" She replied.
"I feel like things are getting out of control. With you and dad always fighting about everything, everything seems so unstable and tense."
His mother had assured him that they were only fighting because they loved him very much and that things would get better soon. She had told him that the sun shine bright again, and that their household would once again become a stable foundation of love and family.
Two months later his parents got a divorce. His father went off to live in San Diego, where he had found a job as a corporate attorney. His mother started drinking heavily and got fired from her job. Max had stayed with his mother, and his sister Grace had moved to San Diego with his father.
After seeing his mother dig herself deeper and deeper into a self-destructive hole Max went outward for help. He had little family that lived around him, as his mother and father had moved to the small town of Hardwick, Vermont after their marriage. Neither his father or his mother had any family there, they had moved for a variety of reasons. First, their marriage was crumbling, and they wanted to rekindle the fire that they had once had for each other. They believed that living in a relaxed setting and raising their children could do that. They also wanted to have a more relaxed job setting. Mary, Max's mother was a writer, and she needed inspiration for a new novel. Paul, Max's father had started a small law firm with a friend of his. They had helped many a farmer through tough times.
Sadly, it hadn't lasted. Three years after the move their relationship once again fell apart. Mary's novel was not a success. Critics wrote that she had lost her passion for writing, and that her book was a failure. Paul's firm did not have enough customers to keep it going. The stress provided by job trouble only lead to making the home situation more and more unstable. As tensions rose Max stayed home less and less. He would prolong his stays at his friend Kyle's house to see how a "normal" family interacted together. He would often dream about his family sitting around the living room, just enjoying being around each other. Eventually he realized that would never happen, and he fell into a period of depression. He stopped eating. His grades tanked. He stayed in his room for days on end, taking his noise canceling headphones out from around his ears only when he wanted to sleep.
Max had never been an emotional child. He had always kept his feelings bottled up tightly inside of him, as a way to protect himself from the harsh reality of the world around him. He hadn't cried since he was a baby, and that was only to get his parents attention. Although eventually Max couldn't take it anymore. One day his emotions could not be kept tightly shut any longer.
One night, after another one of his parents constant fights, Max got up from the dinner table, set his napkin down gently on the table, and left. He stood up without saying a word, and walked up the stairs. He found himself standing in the bathroom. He turned and gazed into the mirror, and a single teardrop rolled down his cheek.
