I always wondered what happens to children with broken homes. Do they ever find homes and shelters to dig their heads in, and find acceptance, or do they struggle all their lives?

A family is supposed to be supportive, caring, and most of all — accepting. I have craved for all of those, all my life, but there has been none. I always found myself in the wake of conflict, and I lost all battles,

because you don’t wage wars against your family, you just succumb.

My fears were that if I confided, people will laugh, ridicule me for the blatant truth. So I kept quiet and swallowed it all in. I found my courage very late in life, only when I heard an author talk about his broken home, how he succumbed to pressure.

Truth is, if you have a tear in your nest, you are incomplete.

There's always a feeling that you are insufficient and incompetent. Although this feeling pushes you ahead in life and provides you with the fuel that charges you to work harder, it also leaves you torn and broken in some ways. Every effort of yours goes unnoticed and every mistake goes highlighted. What you have achieved becomes insignificant and where you're flawed is always in limelight.

You try to prove that you are better than the best, but even if you run ten miles ahead, it’s never sufficient. So you are exhausted, you are dispirited and weak. You eventually become cautious of everything in your life, your identity especially. You are painfully self-aware. Everything that bothers your family, you become aware of it.

If you are dark skinned and your mother complains about it, you try very hard to rub off the grime. If you are fat and ugly, you make an attempt to undo it. You can’t pass in Math, so you sit up all night, working so hard, only because you want to change their perception. 

So when this mess-of-a-person goes past high school and breezes past college and meets the love of her life and decides to get married, what happens to her?

Well for me, I looked down upon myself, told myself I wasn’t good enough and walked out of it. Because I think I am not good enough. So children with broken homes eventually land up broken, alone. The tear is always there.

What can be done? Damage control. Immense patience and love so that they grow out of their insufficiency. So that they grow out of their constant insecurities.

One word for all the families that fight incessantly: it does no good, it’s hurtful and brings more damage than good. Robbing children off their identities is a crime that goes unpunished, and rips hearts silently.

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