So yes, the room is dark. And I don’t like the dark. It makes everything worse. It makes my thoughts louder. My chest tighter. I don’t trust the dark. It’s where the sad things grow. And I guess that’s what this is. Sadness. Or sickness. Or both. I don’t know anymore.

The house I lived in was not made of wood or stone. It was built from expectation and inheritance, from silence arranged as order, from rituals passed down like furniture no one ever questioned.