When you grow up having a tumultuous relationship with your parents, houses become distorted. Creaking floorboards and door handles, rustling keyholes, deep sighs and stares, tones of voice. All signals your brain receives as alarms. Danger. Be quiet. Poke your head into the hallway, but don't be seen. Rest your ear in the door and listen closely. Don't come out.
The house the Finch family lived in is empty, but also isn't. There's no one here, but some things remained. Their favorite things: be they toys, trophies, or photos. Their history is embedded into every wall of the house, sometimes even their deaths are etched into its architecture.
I have lived in many places throughout my life, unlike the Finch family. But still, things remained. I look back to all the houses I've lived in and yet everything feels the same, because I remember what remained. Because it followed me to every house. It lives in the creaking floorboards and rustling keyholes. It lives in the stares and the sighs. Because a house, a home, is not just somewhere you live in. It transcends the physical plane and becomes something much more abstract and hard to explain. I feel like I have always lived in the same house, even though that's not the case. They begin to blend in my mind as a towering structure constructed by memories that feel too familiar.

When you're a kid, the relationship between your parents and grandparents can seem a little whimsical. But when you start growing up, you begin to see the cracks. You see the lies, you see the fighting, and little kid tears just can't fix it anymore. And eventually, the big fight breaks out and you choose a side. Things change forever. You start to learn more of the history of your mom's life. You learn about the abuse, and of the things that remained and eventually escalated into this new reality you've been trust into.

And as time goes by, things get worse. And when things get worse, you start to see what remained with your own eyes, because it's happening to you. The fighting, the screaming, the belittling. Except you're not the observer anymore.

You try getting tough. You also begin to lie and scream and fight.
You try to make distance. To avoid small talk or eye contact all together.
You think you're gonna be different, that you won't be like that.

But you start doing this with the wrong people. To people you love and care about. And this is where the "curse" is born. It takes form out of that cyclical abuse and begins to seep into everything you do. It molds your life into a nightmare and you become convinced. You start to believe there is a curse, that this is how it's gonna play out no matter what. That how you are is predestined: if everyone else couldn't beat it, how could you? The curse takes a hold of you. And it won't let go.


But something eventually happens. There's a change for the better. Maybe life at home is better, we who remain start working out the issues, maybe we find solace in others and we start to realize it doesn't have to be like this. It never had to be.
Our life doesn't have to be dictated by who our parents are, who they think we have to be, or any stupid "curse". The cycle can be broken, be it by our parents or us. And when we break it, what matters is what we leave behind. What remains.