We were broke—living on rice, beans, and the dim glow of solar lights, with stress gnawing away at Eli day by day. I was holding

everything together the best I could—managing bills, scraping together meals, and trying to keep us afloat emotionally. But the

pressure was relentless, and one evening, I snapped. The solar lights flickered weakly over another dinner of rice and beans. Eli

barely touched his plate. He was unraveling—too anxious to eat, too tired to talk.

Our bills kept piling up while my job search led to dead ends, rejection emails,

and radio silence. I felt like I was sinking. Eli clung to hope in the only way he could—tinkering with broken laptops, trying to

fix and sell them for a few extra dollars. But small victories couldn’t patch the growing hole we were falling into. One day, I

walked in to find him surrounded by the pieces of a disassembled computer. The repair had gone wrong. I lost it. “How could

you do this?” I yelled—not at the laptop, but at the never-ending struggle,

the weight we were both carrying. We both shut down after that.

Worn out and emotionally frayed, we retreated into our own silence,