Martyr

Sometimes she felt like the martyr of the family. Obviously no one else viewed her that way. She knew that, of course. But she still felt it sometimes. That the rest of the family inadvertently treated her like a martyr, like she was disposable, or worse, like she was invisible. And maybe it was her fault. She tried to take the blame for her younger siblings even if they were at fault (isn't that what a good older sister should do?). Avoided her older siblings if they were in a bad mood (why give them a reason to lash out at her?). Tried to keep the peace during arguments (how would arguing back or joining in help the situation?). And through it all, her stubborn streak and sometimes-argumentative-spirit lay dormant. At least most of the time.

But when the pressure had built up for just too long - when she had been blamed, walked over, ignored far too often - she erupted. Boiling lava pushed through every fissure in her body, pumped from a fathomless well of resentment, hurt and rage. Her face caved in, lips spewing a scalding fury of steam. She tore through the house kicking hallway walls, smashing living room lamps, ripping pictures from hooks and flinging them onto the entryway tiles. She yanked kitchen utensils out of their orderly drawers and heaved them at her family members. She ran to the garage, slamming her wooden baseball bat onto the family's Honda Odyssey, scratching the navy paint, denting the hood, cracking windows, gouging doors.

Or at least she wanted to. But whenever her emotions boiled to the surface, threatening to explode, she scrambled to her room, spent a minute beating her fists into her thick, down pillow and then calmly took out dozens of nail polish bottles and poured her anger and rejection into art decorating the nails of her fingers and toes.

*Trying out that hurricane-inspired writing challenge from Creative Writing I again, but this time using a different natural disaster.