My Whole Family Is Pretending to Be Happy While I Wait for the Final Cut

My family is a movie set, and everyone is desperately acting their part.

My mother plays the long-suffering, hardworking wife, my father the quiet, dependable man, and my younger brother the sweet, innocent child. Their acting is so convincing that they have fooled every audience. I am the only actor who keeps ruining this family drama, stumbling over scenes where I'm supposed to "give in to my brother" and choking on lines about how I "have to be sensible."

My role is to play a background prop called "daughter," there to make their happy family look complete. Then my diary was read aloud for laughs. Then someone glanced at the scars on my wrist and looked away. At last, I got my real script: it turned out my character's ending was to "disappear quietly."

So I calmly arranged my own final scene. But after I left the stage, the perfect show they'd performed for seventeen years suffered its most brutal exposure.