I wake up to silence, no cat meowing for food or dog scratching at my door. I do not hear my niece crying because she has to get her hair done, or my sister yelling at her to sit still. The house is silent, and I hate it.

I force myself to get up and stop reminiscing about the past. That does not last long, because the second I am in the shower I start thinking again. Every year has been harder, my family becoming more distant as time goes on. I have not seen my cousins in months, remembering a time when I would see them every weekend. We would go to my grandma’s house to hang out together and get on her nerves. Everyone is older now though, family is their last priority, they have other things to worry about. I think back to my grandma, so lively then, forcing us to go to the yard with her to help her garden. Now she can hardly walk up the steps. I try to visit her as often as possible, but it is hard to see her like that.

An alert on my phone releases me from my thoughts. Not my sister banging on the door telling me to hurry up. She moved out the house last year, finally able to get an apartment. Part of me misses the arguments we used to have, and how my niece would try to make us stop. At least she was around, unlike now.

When I am finished getting dressed, I walk downstairs and go to the kitchen. There is no pee on the floor to clean up because no one let the dog out. I stare at where the food bowls for the pets used to be, my cat used to run downstairs with me so I could pet her while she ate. People have asked if I was going to get more pets. The answer is always no, I cannot go through the pain of losing them again. Once is enough for my lifetime.

I grab a granola bar and go downstairs. I see my dad on his computer working, he is officially bald now. The bald spot on his head became too big to ignore. It is only 7:00 a.m. so my mom is probably still upstairs sleeping. We exchange our goodbyes as I head out for school. It is my last semester before I graduate, and I am just taking it one day at a time. I do not know exactly what the future holds, but I rather not think about it. The future means that I will be older, I will have more responsibilities, people will have died, friends will have been lost. I see nothing good in my future.