It just shattered as it hit the floor.
The sound rippled through the air. I know everyone heard it. And before anyone could say anything, I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. My brother quickly stood up to see what had happened, but he didn’t say anything. I could hear someone start to speak, but I wasn’t listening. I just ran. I ran upstairs with tears falling down my eyes and hid in my room. I shut the door as fast as I could, but even that wasn’t as loud in my ears as the sound of that bottle breaking repeating in my mind.
I know it’s just a bottle. There wasn’t anything inherently problematic about it. It wasn’t like I was carrying a platter of all of our meals for the night, or a fragile vase holding sentimental value to the rest of the family. It was just a bottle. We had dozens of them in the cupboard. There was really no reason to cry. Honestly, I didn’t really understand why I was crying either.
Maybe it wasn’t the bottle. Maybe it was the night before where I had slammed haphazardly into the dining table, stabbed in the leg by the sharp wooden corner. But I didn’t cry then. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from making a sound, and rubbed at my eyes to keep them dry. But I didn’t cry then, so why now?
It could have been the moment three days ago when I had spilled a cup of water at lunch time, getting it on my brother’s pants before he had time to even begin eating. But even when he yelled at me, I didn’t break down or anything. I just kept apologizing, frantically reaching for napkins to help clean up my mess. The words “I’m sorry” continued to spill out of my mouth, but no tears fell. I hadn’t cried for a while, actually. But for some reason, dropping that bottle made me explode.
It didn’t make sense. I could have cried any other time. I could have cried before when my sister came into my room and scolded me for not keeping it clean, It could have been a couple days ago when I tore a hole in my shirt and had to spend an hour sewing it shut, or that night when I burned the bread I was toasting for the night’s sandwiches. It could have been that week when I had fallen out of the sky on a trip out of the house, getting scratched up by the branches I fell through only for me to be scolded for leaving the house when I returned. It could have been the night the week before when I stumbled into my father’s room and had to remember that we’re one person short of our family.
But I never cried. Not once at any time did I cry. But when that bottle broke…so did I. Everything just came rushing forwards and the tears wouldn’t stop flowing.
There was a knock on the door. I didn’t stop crying. I only stifled my sniffles because all I could think of was that I was burdening the people in my house, and they probably only wanted to tell me to quiet down. They knocked again. I said nothing. I saw the doorknob turn as my sister opened the door. I didn’t make an attempt to look up at her—I didn’t want to see the look of disappointment on her face. I just sat there curled up, trying not to make a sound as my irregular breaths began to choke themselves back in an effort to make less of a noise.
I felt her hand on my head as she kneeled down to me, but I didn’t make eye contact. I couldn’t explain what happened. I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t know why I was crying. I just felt worthless. I curled up tighter to take up less space. I just didn’t want to be any more of a burden then I had been.
She wrapped her arms around me. She didn’t say anything to me. She just sat there for a while, holding me as I cried. I don’t remember how much time passed. But eventually, after enough time, I had run out of tears. I sat there for longer, though. I didn’t want to get up. I just sat there, letting my sister hug me and letting my breathing stabilize as the tears finally stopped.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
She eventually said something to me, but I didn’t respond. I still didn’t know how to. It was like my voice was gone, and I didn’t have the energy to even look up at her. The silence that followed was deafening, but she still kept her arms around me.
“Do you want to be alone?” She left another long silence. It’s just a yes or no, I said to myself. I didn’t have to talk. I didn’t have to say anything, I just needed to show her. I gathered all the energy I could to shift my head, tilting it up and down feebly. I tried to whisper out a “yes,” but all it came out as was a small whimper under my breath.
She squeezed me tight once more before letting go, standing up to walk out of the room and slowly close the door behind her.
Very shortly after, I was better. Not completely, but I had run out of tears. I just sat down on the floor in the silence of an empty room, wiping away at my face and trying to dry it with my sleeves. I didn’t have the energy to get up again. For some reason, there was no satisfying end to the sadness. There was an awkward period of time where my sniffles had faded, but the looming depressing of the past events had still kept me gloomy and upset.
I just sat in my room for a while trying to unpack everything, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t wrap my head around how I had been so torn up about such small things, yet I couldn’t stop my tears from flowing. It felt impossibly painful even though nothing had hurt me. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything, and I spent over an hour lying on the floor with the threat of tears looming over.
At some point, the lights had turned off in the hallway outside. I could hear small steps retreating into the rooms around me. At that point, I gathered myself and left my room. Part of me felt ashamed to see their faces. But, despite everything, I hadn’t eaten that night. Part of me wanted to lie in my own suffering and starve, but with the downstairs being vacant I decided it would be a good idea to find something to snack on.
The light was still on downstairs, but nobody was there. I could see that the glass from the bottle had been cleaned up already. At the table was a single dish with my dinner, untouched and left alone. I sat myself down at the table, poking at my food idly as I looked around the empty room.
The food was still warm. Or—I realized later—it had been reheated.