At first I did not notice the small things. But then they started to scream so loud that I could not go by without feeling them. I think the first time I ever noticed this was at dinner table. I have a sister, most of us do, who (as all sisters are) is stupid and childish. She is almost as old as I am, but she is a sister anyway. We sit next to each other near the dinner table, but suddenly I noticed that she could watch the television while eating because she sits on the head of the table. I sit with my back turned to the television and all I can see is an abandoned garden through the window. The fact that she was served first, that she always got the biggest and better strawberries. All small things; but could all of them be a coincidence?

I really tried to be friends with her more than once. But for some odd reason she never talks to me. Then my mother started to yell at me more than usual. She usually says what mothers do, that I am her disappointment, that I am an idiot and that I shouldn’t have been born. Every mother says that, whether we want it or not. But allied to the complicity she and my sister have… It’s just weird.

After all it is normal that families are like this. They yell at each other and they make all the possible for the neighbours to wake up. This is how it is possible to keep everyone in a neighbourhood awake till 2 am. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I feel my case is different. That I am not part of them; that I am just a person that permanently rented a room at the house and eats at the same time. Fortunately we still eat all at the same time at the Dining Room, or else I would never see them. Then my mother yells at me because I never see them.

The small things, all the small details… Everything makes me tired of this family. Sometimes, even more than that: many times. I think that it would be better if they were all dead. Then they would not bother me and would not favour anybody else instead of me. It’s not as they ignore me or hate me. I don’t hate them either. It’s just that they always leave me behind on the small things. Life is all made of the small things.

I am a guest.

They don’t hate me, they love me. They just forget I am here sometimes. When they remember they yell. People of this family have pitched voices, I have one too. All I wished is that they would treat me like a real guest and let me be.

Sometimes people try to define the family. Since there are brothers who hate and kill each other some started to state “oh, family is your friends!” But no, it’s not the same thing. It can’t be the same thing. Even if we hate our blood family and go away to live with our friends, we still can’t forget them. Memories of them come all around and they sing badly.

Others say “family is where your home is”. And the home is the place you consider as yours. What if I don’t have one? What if I am an adolescent with theoretical personal problems that insists in not finding their personal space? Or what if the place you consider as yours is completely… Empty? A family can’t be a drawer, four walls and a chair. Maybe a bed. But no, not even a bed can be your family.

Finally, the last popular option is “family is who raised you”. Now I should go over the cases of traumatized adopted children that wanted to meet their biological parents, but where’s the poetry in that? If part of your family is who raised you, are your teachers your family as well? Are all the hardships of childhood and life your family as well?

I can’t understand. But my mother says I am stupid, therefore it’s only normal.

Now I am standing with the other side of my family, the father’s side. They don’t favour my sister and they don’t avoid me but I still can’t have a conversation with them. I think it’s only because we don’t have any common interest to talk about. The weather is an issue that dies easily. I don’t see them often, they live on the opposite side of an ocean. But even with so many years passed we can’t talk with each other.

“So, how are your studies going?”

“Terribly, thank you for asking.”

And everything ends there.

Maybe I am exception and maybe there is an exceptional group as me. Maybe I don’t have a family at all. It is lonely, very lonely, but does not matter anymore. Sometimes I really wish they were all dead and that they would let me be. I don’t hate them, they don’t hate me, but I’m not more than a guest in their lives.

My cousins are not that young as the last time I saw them, but they still have fun hunting for birds. They use slingshots and just got a big sparrow. Now they are going to get the kids of the neighbourhood and make it a funeral. It disgusts me. Somewhere in the woods I listen to the abandoned chicks begging for food. I think I am going to find where they are. Now that their mother is gone they will starve for sure.