Do you know that there have been terrible things happened in this mall? I don't but, I heard some stories about it; people jumping from the edge of the big circle in the middle of the mall. Oh yeah, it happened. I felt terrible about those people, I really do. It's just... depressing when you try to think about it. Imagine that even in this kind of place, in a place where there's a lot of people around, there will be some instances that one person will jump off of that height and crush their skull in the ground- for what? Why did they do it? Why here? It's odd, really odd but, I do love odd things, peculiar things, and all sorts.

Speaking of peculiarity, you won't believe me if I tell you about what I think when it comes to 'our' reality. Sometimes I hate my mind for being such an over-thinker but, I admire it most of the time. Why? Because, there's a lot of shitty things happens in here- shitty but good ones. I spent most of my time in my room all by myself, all day. So, I had a lot of time for thinking. I had this theory of mine that this reality that we have right now is just a dream. That we're all dead- wait, no, sleeping, rather. While we're asleep, we're dreaming about this reality that we now live in. That when you die here, in this fake-reality, that's when you wake up in the much more real world. Just like the matrix, you know? And, the government knows about this and some people there want us to actually wake up and that their main platform is the media and entertainment... Ugh, shit, I am crazy as hell. I sound like a total idiot.

Anyway, I kinda felt a little bit better now. No more shaking, no more heavy breathing and all, and finally, I am now sitting in one of the table-for-two here in the food-court. It's so lively in here, people talking with other people, eating foods. There's some gang of teenagers, some couples who look like definite shits, the staffs here who looks tired as me, and there's this one family- the only family that I saw in here, eating their food, laughing at each other, the Mom was feeding her little daughter, the father was telling something into one of his boys about... I don't know, and the other child was just eating his food like a normal person while still listening to his Dad. Finally, a good picture to paint.

I looked at them from a distance, not so far from me but boy, was I jealous of them. They're eating some fucking good-tasting food while I'm stuck here with my book, laying flatly in the table, behind my small bag. But, it's fine. I gotta convinced myself that it's fine. I love reading and a good story to read. But, of course, there's nothing much better than to have dinner with my family like that. We do that sometimes but... I don't know, it's different. Or maybe it is just me who kinda felt different when we eat together. February, April, May, August, and December, we always go out, my family, we go out to have some fun... My parents and my siblings do have some fun but, I was with them, and all I do is to look at them while they're having fun, quiet as always. I hate it, you know? That trait of me, being quiet when I'm around with them.

"Do I really need to mess up everything?" I mumbled silently to myself. If I must say, I love them, my family, I really do, especially my Mom. It's just... It's just that I'm quiet, so, so quiet. I am so unlike my siblings who's both outgoing and socially active, my parents too, they have so many friends and they always talk to each other with genuine closeness as friends. Then here I am, mouth always shut whenever I'm with them, silent as the cosmos.

Whenever I ask myself 'why?', I always end up with my past- my childhood. My mother is a tough woman, indeed she is! One time, I remember that I cried my ass out when she ordered me to buy rice for dinner and the plastic bag just slipped into my hands and fell into the ground and damn it, the rice was all over the ground. It was nighttime back then, and I'm all by myself, scared that my mom will find out. I started picking up, gathering all the raw rice from the ground while tears just flowing down into my cheeks. I was so scared because, I know that my mom will be so, so mad at me that she'll hit me with dad's belt. While I was crying, kneeling in the ground, my aunt and her friend helped me to gather the rice and put it back into the plastic bag. My aunt hushed me and told me that If I won't stop crying, my mom will hear me, and crying won't get the work done so, I stopped crying and wiped all the tears in my face. I also remember when she tried to kick me out in the house, I forgot why she did it but, I was already outside our house (the one that I told you about earlier) with a plastic bag full of my clothes. I was crying, again, and I remember asking her where should I go, and then she looked at me, with guilt and just pulled me back again inside our house and hugged me. I was seven at that time, and I was scared of my mom, that she would leave a welt into my skin whenever she got mad at me, kids aren't allowed to perfect at everything they do, you know? And my mom doesn't know that before.

She's always mad and upset back when I was a kid. Maybe because of dad, oh boy, my dad can be one hell of a jerk sometimes, especially when I'm still the only child. They always argue because my dad won't stop doing stupid things! And so, that's why my mom is always angry and grumpy, maybe that's why she always tries to beat me whenever I made a mistake and tell her I'm sorry. That's all in the past now, I grew up like this, with her guidance and all. The thing that my mom does that I will never forget was not giving up on our family even though she had the chance. She loved a man who has cheated on her multiple times just for our family to workout. She never leaves us even though I can see it on her, how tired she is.

There's this one time when I overheard her and dad had an argument and my dad made her cry and that was the first time I ever heard my mom cried. I never saw nor hear her cry, never. That's why, that night, when I heard her sobs, I promised to myself that if my dad makes her cry again, I will punch him in the face as hard as I can. My dad never made her cry again thank God with that, so, I punched myself in the face as hard as I can five hours ago because...because I made my mother cry.