Last night I wanted to run into the desert, stomped my feet, spread my arms wide and yell to the gods… “Why is there so much hate?” “Why is she lashing out at everyone with such anger?”

Mom can’t hear (you have to stand 6” from her good ear and yell). Dad wears a hearing aid but still can’t hear (“his battery must be dead”). Their conversations are like some comic tragedy. Dad speaks. Mom speaks. Sometimes both speak at the same time, but the two sentences have nothing to do with each other. Then they both get angry and scream and yell at each other for not responding.

As a frog of little brain, I don’t understand. If the gods don’t take her before hand, she will eventually die of cancer. How can someone who knows their days are numbered have so much anger and hate inside? Every day is the same, yelling screaming, accusations, and insults. I try not to become involved but it is dragging me down.

I have no friends, no doctors and no support here in the middle of the desert, only me. My parents know only the confident 20 year old that left home to make her mark on the world. They know nothing of the damaged froggy that now resides inside.

The irony of this, when I leave in a couple of weeks, I return not to a sanctuary but to a living hell. I don’t know if I can survive or even want to. The sadness and desperation are there waiting in the shadows, ready to pounce upon my return.

I'm so tired of all this. It is getting too hard to even try.