There are things children aren't supposed to understand—
but we learn them anyway.
We learn them in the pauses between adult words,
in the way footsteps sound on unstable floors,
in the sharpness of slammed doors,
in the heaviness Mom tries to hide behind tired smiles.
By the time I was old enough to sit up on my own, the trailer felt different. Even I could feel it—before I ever knew what fear was, before I could speak a single word.
It started with small things.
Shannon coming home witness enthusiasm.
The smell of suffering and comfort radiating off of him.
Mom pacing the kitchen with her hands shaking more than usual.
Bills stacked on the counter, face down, like turning them toward the table could make them.
And Mom—she loved hard, the way a drowning person clings to whatever looks like a raft.
Even when the raft was full of holes.
Even when it was pulling her under.
There were good moments, too, and that's what made things confusing.
Shannon could be gentle.
He could laugh with us.
He could fix something in the house just enough to make Mom believe he meant to keep his promises.
He could hold me like I mattered.
That's how unstable love works—it comes in waves.
Beautiful one second, terrifying the next.
And for kids, the crash is always the first lesson.
One evening stands out in the stories Mom tells—the kind of memory that becomes a cornerstone no matter how small it seems.
The both of us were in the living room.
Mom was trying to fold laundry with one hand while keeping me balanced on her hip.
The air was calm at first.
Calm enough to make Mom think it might stay that way.
Then the door swung open.
Hard.
Shannon stumbled inside, loud in the way people get when they've had too much of something—anger, disappointment, life. The kind of loud that makes children freeze.
Mom didn't yell.
She never started the fights.
Instead, she went still, her body tensing in that instinctive way—protective before anything bad even happens.
She held me tighter.
There's a thin line between an argument and a storm,
and adults always think they're the only ones who see it.
But kids feel the change in the air.
That night, Shannon's words were sharp, slurred on the edges. Mom tried to keep her voice soft, steady, calm, but he kept pushing—accusing her of things she didn't do, twisting her stress into excuses for his temper.
The trailer felt smaller when he was angry.
The walls seemed closer.
The air seemed thinner.
He never touched me.
But the rage in the room was enough to leave marks anyway.
Mom finally told him to stop—that was the moment everything snapped.
Not into violence, not yet.
But into something worse in its own way:
Realization.
Mom realized that she was losing herself.
I began to realize adults weren't going to protect me from everything.
And even I realized—without language, without memory—that something dangerous lived behind the things adults said they could fix.
When the yelling ended and Shannon left again, slamming the door so hard the walls rattled, Mom sank to the floor with me still in her arms. She cried quietly, the kind of crying you do when you don't want your children to hear but they always do anyway.
Mom whispered:
"I'm sorry… I'm trying."
And that's the thing about real heartbreak—it doesn't break the moment someone leaves.
It breaks in the moments when you stay, even though every part of you wishes you didn't have to.
That night in the trailer, the both of us huddled together, the world outside silent, the inside shaken.
I wouldn't remember it.
But it would shape me.
It would shape all of us.
Because some nights mark the beginning of the end—
even when you don't realize it until much, much later.