As we all get further and further from being okay and tolerance for pain seeps into decay

Your nerve endings tense up and you close your eyes and you wait for it to hit.  All of your muscles are bracing in hopes your skin will feel less of the heat if they do.  The fear comes up the abdomen and starts to tickle into the throat. A pair of lips purse because if the scream comes out this whole facade will be ruined.

The whole facade of being okay, of being alright and good enough.  How much stress and hurt can a person take in one day? You can take the hours of work, the physical labor and the dealings with strangers. But then what? To come home to a house of such bitterness and anger that maybe isn't towards you, but certainly is being thrown your way.  Looking good enough to be a target. A target for their worries and their pain and they expect you to absorb it.  Only so much pressure can be contained within a closed space before it explodes.

Your head becomes a hanging pendant, threatening to fall off the neck as you climb up the stairs.  The heart and conscience almost become heavier than the head and you open the door to your room and close it, lest someone come visit with a high volume voice and a list of grievances.

When you're not good enough, but you have to deal with everyone's everything--fix their problems, comfort them, and act as a shock absorbent shield for all the pain they outwardly direct physically and verbally--it's not fun.  And then getting blamed for everyone's everything, and it being awkwardly rationalized to be all your fault--then running to the mailbox because you forgot about your college tuition deposit and checking your bank account to see if you're any closer to being comfortable paying for a single semester.  Asking yourself if the people you love will ever be okay, because if they're not you never will be.  Not because you have to deal with their shit; because you love them too much not to.

You look at your father and all his material success, and your mother and all the things that she wanted and got to make her happy.  You wonder what exactly must be achieved to be happy, looking at the people who have everything and the picket fence.  Their smiles are fake and you need sleep.