When does the fighting end? When do they learn that they are the adults in the house, and not me? They act like they are five year old children who don't know how to get along about anything.

If it's not bad enough, my little baby sisters are here. They are only 12 and 6 and the words coming out of my parents mouths are not words appropriate for little girls to hear and to think about and worry about.

I thought they stopped this. It used to be horrible when I was a little girl. They think I can't remember, but I will never be able to forget the screams in the middle of the night, the broken glass, the hurtful words. I remember my daddy being arrested, even if it was for just one night. I remember going to the YMCA for my swimming lessons and my mom leaving me there and forgetting about me because she was fighting with my dad. I remember sitting there, waiting. I remember laying in my bed in the middle of the night, sobbing, being scared, not sure what to do.

I want my sisters to have better than that. I don't want them to be scared and worried. I don't want them to cry. And I don't want them to hear all these hurtful things that my parents don't think before they say. I don't want them to hear about how much my parents wished they never got married, wish they never had kids, etc.

I can't be the adult. I try to stop this, I try to intervene, talk sense into these people who I call Mom and Dad but I can't make them see how they are acting. I can't make them understand how scared they make us, the little ones especially.

The fights get so awful and I myself am scared. So I take my sisters to the park, in the snow, to try to get their minds off of things. But my own mind stays on the subject and I'm worried.

I can't make things better. It's not my fight to solve, not my problems to fix.

I know that not everyone can have a picture perfect, Brady Bunch family, but it sure would be nice if mine could just stop fighting long enough to appreciate each other a bit.

yesterday - tomorrow