Taming Mrs. Mafia

51 God, I'm Tired

"Hana."

She's dreaming again. She knew it.

"Hana."

She looked around, trying to find out where the voice was coming from, and when she turned to her right, she came face to face with a stubby middle-aged woman.

Luna took a step back in surprise.

"Hana." The woman called her and when she did not respond, the woman flicked her forehead.

The moment the woman's finger came in contact with her forehead, waves and waves of memories surged into her head.

"Hana! Mom and Dad are fighting again! What should we do?" It was Elena, her youngest sister, and she's screaming in panic.

Hana... that's my name.

Before she could utter a response, she heard another batch of plates crash not far from where they were and then silence.

Hana did not see anything but she could feel the tension in the air.

After that fat silence, everything was a blur. All Hana remembered was that she was in the bathroom and she was cleaning herself so she could finally retire for the night. There were soap suds everywhere when-

"Ahhhhhh! Hana!" Elena's shrill scream got her scrambling for the towel and running to wherever her sister was.

And there she was, with Meredith, clutching their mother's feet as the older woman dragged a duffel bag filled with her things. Their mother was leaving.

"Hana! Mom is leaving us!"

Her sisters' tear-stricken faces prompted the floodgates in her eyes and her brain short-circuited. If their mom leaves, how about her sisters? Who would take care of them? Me? But I'm just a kid, so what about me?

She grabbed their mother's hand and tried to get her bag from her but the unrinsed soap clinging to her body like second skin prevented her from grasping things tighter and she hated it. Why is everything slipping off her hands?

"Mom! Don't leave us." And that night, she begged like her life depended on it.

Every day, the tension inside their house drained her. Her parents were not talking to each other and her mother was constantly bitching about her aching cheeks that her father hit the night she attempted to leave.

Hana's tired.

She slept with one eye open and doing it every night made her feel like she did not sleep a wink at all.

Every day she functioned in autopilot mode- woke up, helped her sisters get ready for school, went to school, went home, prepared dinner, and slept while being on guard in case something happened between their parents again. She filled the gap her parents made in silence.

Communication? What's that? Their life moved on even with that big fat tension inside their house. Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, and months turned to years. Nothing's resolved and everybody just moved on and changed- except Hana.

She focused on her studies even though she hated studying and became an academic achiever who made her parents proud, but the weight of their expectant gazes added to the fat tension in their 'home' and it suffocated her.

When she liked something but her sisters liked it, too, she'll give it up to them so their parents would not fight over which parent passed on selfishness to her. She hated listening to them argue over every little thing.

Her parents loved having her as a trophy child and she tried so hard to please them thinking that if she became the perfect child, her family would stay together and they did.