It was three days after my father died, and the house felt like a swamp thick with wasps—buzzing bodies everywhere, too many people crowding, moving, talking. Every push of my wheelchair felt like being jostled through a sea of noise I couldn't even hear. I kept being shuffled from one place to another, moved aside to "make way" for visitors, every time I tried to settle somewhere. I finally decided my room was the only sanctuary, the only place where the chaos outside didn't feel like it was pressing into my skin, suffocating me. Not that I could help anyone—what could I do like this? Deaf, trapped in this body, silent.
I pulled out my tablet and tried to lose myself in the world of the novel I'd been reading for two days, letting the words wrap around me like a shield. My eyes scanned the pages, but my heart wasn't there. My thoughts kept wandering, gnawing at the edges of the story.
A tap interrupts me. I look up. My not-so-favorite aunt stands there, smiling too brightly, a cheerfulness that makes me grit my teeth. I don't smile back. Pretending feels impossible. I stare at her, waiting for her to sign.
"Why aren't you with the rest of the family?"
Her hands move slowly, deliberately, and I feel a spike of irritation that makes my stomach clench. By "the rest of the family," she means her, her irritating son—whose very existence I despise—and my grandparents, who are mostly harmless, but whose pity feels like a spotlight on my misery.
"I want to be alone," I sign. Short. Sharp. Precise. My only relief is that she can sign back, so I don't have to drag out my tablet.
She hesitates, then speaks again with her hands:
"I know it's hard for you… because you're in a wheelchair, you can't hear, and now your dad is gone. But please… we all lost something, too. Maybe not as much as you, but we still lost. Just know we're here for you."
And that is exactly why I despise her. She doesn't understand that I don't need reminders. I don't need her pity. Her words are like salt in an open wound—reminders of everything I already know: my life is broken, my suffering visible to everyone, the world has it out for me, and everyone else gets to measure their pain against mine like some cruel, meaningless contest.
I nod, stiffly, and turn back to my tablet. I can feel her eyes on me, still judging, still trying to fix something that can't be fixed. My stomach knots, my chest tightens, but I force myself to focus on the story in front of me.
Another tap. I sigh. My mother stands there, silent, her face swollen and red from crying every day since Dad died. I can see the exhaustion etched into the lines of her face, the way she carries the grief and still tries to be strong for me.
"I just want to let you know," she signs carefully, her fingers trembling slightly, "they've agreed to bury your father next Wednesday. It's the only convenient day for everyone."
She hands me her notebook. I read the words, and something inside me snaps. Wednesday. My birthday. My chest tightens, a bitter, scorching anger rising in my throat. I want to scream, I want to shout, I want to throw the notebook across the room and scream at anyone who decided that "convenience" mattered more than me, more than the fragile pieces of my life still standing.
Why would Mama agree? She knows it's my birthday. She knows what this day will feel like for me now. But she just nods and leaves quietly, like there's nothing more to say. Like I'm not even here.
And then, for the first time since Dad died, I feel something break inside me. A trembling, hollow sort of ache. Tears sting my eyes and slide down my cheeks, but they don't come from grief over him. No. They come from the relentless unfairness of life, from the way the world keeps piling more suffering onto me, more isolation, more cruelty.
I rest my palms on my thighs, letting them catch the tears. My chest burns with frustration, resentment, and a raw, aching hatred for the world that keeps punishing me. I hate it all—the house, the people, the day, the world itself. And I hate the way it makes me feel—small, helpless, trapped, yet still forced to exist in a body that won't move, in a life that refuses to let me rest.
I hate it. I hate all of it.