Painted Glass

We were four children born into different houses, the same parents but somehow raised in four different ways.

That’s what people don’t understand when they hear us tell our stories. They think the truth should sound the same, that our memory should walk a similar line. But memory fractures. It bends around pain. It chooses what it can carry.

We each carry the weight of our parents’ choices differently. Like stones placed in our hands at birth, sized according to what they thought we could bear.

I am the fourth and an adult, though in their eyes I am still a child. The one they watch too closely, the one they speak to slowly, carefully, as if I might shatter if they raise their voices.

Our oldest is the prince, who learned how to command attention. He was the one who could do no wrong, and get away with crimes. A hunter.

The second oldest remembers the worst of it. The early years, when the shouting still echoed off the walls, when discipline meant chains and belts and words sharp enough to leave marks no one could see. He learned early how to stand between them, to protect us. He learned how to defend. A soldier.

The third remembers all of it; the violence itself, the aftermath—the tension, the apologies that never came, the way love was rationed and conditional. She grew up believing affection was something you earned by being good, by being small, by being easy. She learned how to be what others needed for her own survival. She learned how to nurture. A mother.

Our parents would tell you they did their best. That from their circumstances, how they raised us was better.

They would tell you they were stressed, young, unprepared. They would tell you they loved us. And maybe they did, in the way people love things they don’t know how to care for.

Physical violence taught us to flinch before a hand was raised.

Emotional cruelty taught us to second-guess every feeling.

Psychological manipulation taught us to distrust our own memory.

We learned not to cry too loudly, not to react too quickly, not to ask if something was wrong. Pain became something private—something to hide, something to swallow whole before anyone noticed.

Even now, I feel like I will always be a child in their eyes.

They still explain things I already know. Still warn me about dangers I’ve already survived. Still speak as if I am someone they must guide, protect and save. They did not see the years I spent raising myself. They do not see the weight I learned to carry quietly.

They still apologize for abandoning me, for not taking me away because they got reprieves, scattered and imperfect as they were. Some were sent to foster homes—bad ones, sometimes worse relatives. Later, all of them found escape in the service. None of it was easy. Each resulted in its own damage. But they still swear it was better than staying with our parents.

I, did not get a break. No sleepovers, no weekend trips to the grandparents. Ours are dead. My mother kept me on a short leash, always at arms length. While I did not receive a third of what they did, collectively, they agree somehow I had it worse.

We are all adults now. That means I am old enough to sit at the big kid table, and be in on big kid conversations. Though our shared trauma made us equally keep each other at a distance, when I finally was able to make the big kid choice, they supported me. They brought me into the compound where we now reside as a unit. Our own little militia—not trained for violence, but for defense and mutual protection. We know how to read each other’s silences, how to recognize when someone is bracing for impact. We protect without asking, step in without needing to be told.

We learned those skills early. Now we use them for each other.

When we are together, something unclenches. Our shoulders lower. Our breathing slows. We don’t have to explain the pauses in our sentences or the way certain words make us flinch. We don’t have to pretend the past didn’t happen.

We find solace in the smallest moments.

Recently our afternoons consist of hanging out in the driveway, watching our kids ride bikes or scooters or teaching the other to skate. Us sisters, reading our books, spreading ourselves across the warm concrete like cats in the sun. We don’t talk much, accept to occasionally share an excerpt from a page that we found hilarious, or to remind the kids to get out of the road. Our silence was safe.

The second, he cracks open a cold one, absorbing the sun, face covered by his Chicago Bears hat. He has his weapon properly holstered because he knows danger isn’t a concern.

This is the best refuge we ever built. How I would describe it, would be like a painted glass house.

It isn’t a real house. Not exactly. It’s a shared but unspoken place where we can bring ourselves as we are.

It is made of glass, because we refuse to lie to each other. Because everything is visible here—the fear, the anger, the grief. Painted, because we have covered our scars with art, rewriting the wounds, resealing the cracks.

The painted glass house is where we go when one of us sends out an SOS.

It doesn’t matter how far apart we are or how busy life has become. When the message comes—sometimes a call, sometimes a single word text, sometimes just silence that lasts too long—we show up.

No questions. No judgment. Just presence.

Inside our house, we are not the roles our parents assigned us. Not the responsible one, not the invisible one, not the fragile one, not the protector. We are just siblings who made it through.

We remind each other of what was real. We say, “That wasn’t okay,” when someone starts to minimize. We say, “You were just a kid,” when blame creeps in.

We grieve together. We laugh together. We rest.

We are no longer alone, living in different ways.

We have each other. We have our stories, as unique as they are, woven together into something stronger than any single truth. We have a refuge we built with honesty and care, and shared love.

And when the house feels too loud again, when the past bangs on the walls demanding to be remembered, we step back into the sunlight.

We sit beside each other.

And for a while, we are safe.