Dear Diary...

Dear Diary,
Yesterday I almost ran away from my house... I shy away from using the word "home" sometimes. The yelling and screaming among my family members, ricocheting off the walls and tunneling deep into my head, made me shake, squeezing all the salt water from my body out through my tear ducts. I was scrubbing spots on the kitchen floor at the time of the eruption, merely an innocent and unassuming bystander at the scene of a war, a war of the spontaneous combustion variety, the result of an omnipresent volatile substance carried within an interestingly high number of human beings.
"Just grab the keys and drive away. The door is only a few strides away. You have keys. Just get in the car and drive."
I felt my body try to lunge from my crouched position on the floor, but all I could do was just grip my cloth tighter, scrub the already-gone spots harder. All I could do was go over and over the same spot on the floor... scrubbing in circles, circles, circles... while tears steadily and heavily flowed from my eyes.
Inhaling cleaning vapors never felt so good yet so unrewarding. Staying crouched on my knees on the floor never felt so safe yet so completely vulnerable.
Diary, why could I not rise from the floor and run out the door?
Why would my body not move? Why did it just wait out the waves of the argument crashing down all around me?
When all I'm left with is a dirty washrag and a tear-stained face, I wish I did not have a family.
At least, not this family.
Until next time Diary,
eleanor