She was nine years old when she realized her family slowly started crumbling apart. There she cried, on the down stair’s chair as she listened to the screaming and yelling pain from her parent’s bedroom. Hours and Hours has past, and still there she cried, on the down stair’s chair. As she slowly made her way up stairs at the corner of her eye, she saw suitcases. She wiped her red, soaked face and looked up; tears rolling down her parents’ cheeks. Before she knew it he mom ran out the door. Her dad slithered away in anger and sorrow to his bedroom and there she stood in silence. She grabbed her teddy bear got a blanket and crept back to her place on the down stairs.


She woke with dried tears resting on her cheeks. Slowly, she dragged her feet to the bathroom and gave herself a long stare in the mirror. Red rings covered her eyes. She was tired. Tired of all of this. She creaked her mom’s door open and noticed she came back last night. She went downstairs to the laundry room to get a towel. She noticed her father weeping and coughing on the floor. She went over to her dad and sat down in front of him. He cried for the longest time. She never left his side and every now and then one of her father’s tears would splash on her foot. After her dad’s news, he stomped away upstairs. He packed his things and left. After she realized he was gone to a new home, she crawled up and cried on the down stair’s chair.

Four years of misery had passed and the only one she knew that still made her feel loved is the only one that was been through all she has, is her dog, Tonka. It was a dark spring day and she sat in her room with the dog and just talked. She talked and sobbed for hours in the darkness; even though there was no response, she knew Tonka was listening. Later that day, her mom took him to the vet and came home with just a paw print stamped in the middle of a piece of clay. At the top of the clay, letters spelled out, “Tonka.” She took the piece of clay, went down stairs, and cried on the down stair’s chair.

It had been three months after Tonka left her, and when she was coming home from school she noticed a red paper taped to the door that wrote, “Eviction Notice.” She crumpled up the red piece of paper, threw it in the yard, and went inside the house... She came out of her room to a crying mother and two police officers. It’s been the sixteenth night that police have been there because of her 16-year-old brother. For the past two weeks, he has had kind of a routine going. He fights and screams at her mom and says the most horrible things anyone can say. She calls the police and he runs out the door. The cops never find him. Theirs not a night when the police don’t come rushing in her house. Theirs not a night when her mom and brother aren’t screaming at each other. This one night; it was different. It was worse. It was a Friday night and she was coming home from the movies. No surprise, their were three police cars parked outside of her house. Inside, the house was destroyed. Everything in sight was broken, including her mom. With two broken fingers and blood oozing out of her mom’s mouth their she was, crying hysterically to the policeman. She looks out the window, and notices her brother in the backseat in handcuffs. As her and her mom watch him drive away from home, she took her mom’s hand, they went down stairs, and cried on the down stair’s chair.

It was the last night of school when she found out that her dad was dying of ALS. That shortly, he will be taken from the world. He will shortly be taken away from her. She let go of her mom’s hand and ran out of the house, slamming the door behind her. She ran. Ran to no where. It was midnight when she came rushing in her best friend’s house and cried on her lap until sunrise.

Her dad, he was getting worse. A lot worse. At this point, the disease spread through his whole body. Her dad had no choice but to move back into this hell hole they call a “house.” With her dad there, darkness just filled her. With her dad there, it just put a lot more stress and pressure that she couldn’t take. With what he had in his body, her dad was yelling at her; screaming. Screaming at her for something she didn’t even do. The yelling kind of became a daily thing. She thought of her place, and crept to the down stair’s chair.

When her mom came home from the Jefferson County Juvenal Center with sadness across her face, she knew something had happened to her brother. Her brother thought death was the only choice for him. So when she found out that her brother wrapped his bed sheet around his head and tried to suffocate himself, she grabbed his picture and cried on the down stair’s chair.


He was moved. Moved from that terrible place with sealed, grey concrete walls, and barbed wire fences, to a mental institution. At least that place had kids with actual smiles on there face and some flowers here and there. But he didn’t last long. He had to move back to the terrible place with sealed, grey concrete walls and barbed wire fences.

Hope had left her side. Happiness had done the same. Where had God been for the past five years? Her dad was almost empty with nothing left, her mom didn’t have support and no money, and her brother had nothing and no one. There is not a night where she gets a blanket, and cries herself to sleep on the down stair’s chair.