Stolen Childhood [2nd Draft]

The red-orange leaves fell from each branch of the old, spindly yet somewhat beautiful tree , dancing as they did so, rising and falling as the wind blew them gently. Time seemed to be passing so quickly, my mind racing, and yet, strangely my actions all seemed slow and clumsy. I had so many things to do- countless homework tasks, making and serving dinner, clean my room, have a shower, dry and straighten my hair, feed the fish and clean them out, read my book, do some ironing and then put it away, wash some clothes, put the dishwasher on and then go out to babysit at 8pm. Then after babysitting, I had to talk to my friends for a while to make sure they were all okay and then I could pack my school bag, make my lunch and set out clothes for the morning. I guessed that I would finally get to bed about 12.30, or 1am. Unless a friend needed to talk, or had been having a bad night and was upset, in which case she may be up until 2 or 2.30am. This scenario was highly probable but I felt rather optimistic at that moment and so hoped it wouldn’t. I knew I couldn’t get everything done before I went to babysitting so I made a list of what I had to do and put it in some sort of logical order. Though, my logic hadn’t been too great lately. I took my homework with me to my babysitting job and resolved to do it once the children were in bed. I had no idea how I would stay awake until 11 or whatever time the parents would get back. It hadn’t been easy since mum got ill. Dad wasn’t too well either and I was left to cope. Most of the time, I didn’t mind looking after my dad, brother and the house. I was sure it wouldn’t be forever. I was sure mum would get better soon. I was sure things would go back to normal. No more hospital visits, no more staying up to the early hours of the morning doing homework or housework. I wouldn’t have to come home to find my dad collapsed on the floor again, after taking his insulin and not eating anything. It was a week since I had last come home to find him collapsed, unable to open his eyes and with a really low blood glucose reading. There was something terrifying about it, I was seeing my father, the man who was supposed to keep me safe, teach me right from wrong, show me how best to live my life , in that state- struggling to cope, and even to live. His world was falling apart before my eyes and he wasn’t winning his fight to keep things as normal as possible. He loved my mother very much and he now saw her in hospital only a few times a week. 1

I couldn’t bear being in school, I no longer felt like a person. I merely floated through the day, a ghost of my former self. I tried hard to smile and pretend everything was fine, but my head seemed to be filled with clouds and I felt like I was looking down on everything from a great height and seeing it in a new and scary light. Nothing was as simple as I thought. Nothing was as beautiful as it seemed. Nature was a lie, making the world seem delicate yet hard-wearing, pretty, alive even. However, in reality things were nothing like that. People lied all the time about their life and nobody knew. I lied. I lied a lot. I let my friends and teachers know that mum was ill but I didn’t ever tell them dad wasn’t well either. I didn’t tell them I was looking after my dad and brother as well as keeping the house clean, organised and filled with food on top of my homework. I hadn’t taken much time off school since mum got ill. I visited her, but only after school. I always dreaded our visits because dad would drive. I was always scared he would get low in the car and crash it. Mum didn’t know about dad’s hypos. Or that he was taking time off work and spent most of his time in bed, too upset to get up. I hadn’t told mum that I was the one doing the washing up, the cooking, and the cleaning. Or that I played nurse to dad and helped my brother with everything. Mum knowing wouldn’t have stopped it anyway. It would have just made her worse and it would have made dad angry. 2

I missed my old life. When I enjoyed school and when I always had at least one parent in good health. When there was always food on the table. When I could go out with friends and when I didn’t have to lie. I hated lying more than anything. We didn’t do a weekly shop. If I didn’t stop in past the supermarket on my way home from school to pick up some bread rolls or something, we had no food. Often, I forgot and I had to find something in the house. I ended up missing meals because there was only enough food for 2. Not that dad ate very much anymore. But I always gave him food, in the hope that he would, leaving me to go hungry. I didn’t care that I was losing weight, it wasn’t about that. It was about keeping my family fed rather than myself. I could survive. I had to. 3

Some days, the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that mum would be home soon. Or soon-ish. I knew I would have to look after her when she got home, but I also knew that dad would cheer up immensely because he would have the love of his life back in his home, there when he woke up and there when he fell asleep. I knew he was missing her; although, I doubt I will ever understand the scale of his pain. You only had to look into his eyes to see it, watch him struggling to see that he was exhausted from it. While everybody else commented on how time was flying, I felt the opposite. The second hand on the clock seemed to have only two speeds, slow and stop. And the slow was getting slower by the day. I was sure time was about to stop, that I would be frozen, unable to escape the nightmare. Some days, time did stop, not passing, just mattering. What was there in life when I had to care for my whole family and myself? Who could I have told anyway? It’s not like anybody cared. If they had cared, they would have noticed. They would have asked how mum was. Instead, all the problems I had before were magnified and multiplied upon. I used to like school. Even if I was despised. I used to enjoy lessons, love learning, and adore talking to my friends. 4

When mum got ill, I stopped loving anything. Nothing mattered but her getting better. Other people had ‘real problems’ to deal with. Mum lying in hospital and dad suffering at home wasn’t a real problem. My grades in class falling were nothing. The fact that I never said a word during those months mattered to no-one. The quieter I was, the more time I had to think, and the easier target I was made to the ‘cool kids’. They didn’t care in the slightest that I was going through my own personal torture. They just wanted the rush of hurting someone, making their life feel worthless. They didn’t seem to grasp the concept that my life was more worthless than they could ever understand at that moment. There were days I felt like someone had stolen my breath. Days I felt like someone had taken my stomach, pounded it into the floor with a mallet and then forced it down my throat. I couldn’t stop it. Nobody cared. I kept getting beaten up but nobody noticed, leaving me believing it was all my fault- my fault that mum was ill, that dad was miserable. For everything. I dreaded school so much. In the mornings, before I left, my stomach would feel like an elephant had stamped on it in my sleep or like someone had just cut it open, stabbed me, punched me harder than I had ever been punched, the constant fear of being found out, the fear of dad having a hypo when at the top of the stairs and falling down them and worse, the fear of mum getting worse and me not being there to tell her everything would be okay. I always stressed about my schoolwork and homework. There was so much to do but I never had the time now. There was always something else to think about or to occupy my day. I would lock myself in the bathroom after everyone else was asleep and do it there, it was the only time I had a minute to spare where nobody would ask me to help them or when I didn’t have other tasks to do. 5

On the Tuesday, I went to visit mum. I went alone this time, I couldn’t bear another afternoon in school and so I hopped on the bus and went to the hospital. After the three months of visiting her, I knew the path to her room like the back of my hand. I got to her room only to find the bed empty. Everything was still in its place, except for her. I sat beside the bed, waiting on her getting back, thinking that she must be at a scan or getting tests. The alternative didn’t cross my mind.6

After about twenty minutes, I decided to ask a nurse if she would be back soon. I knew immediately the reality when the nurse remembered who I was. The look on her face gave it away. But I still didn’t believe it. I had to hear it to believe it.7

“I’m sorry” she began.8

I stopped listening, the world went blank. I didn’t want to hear her say it- if I didn’t hear it, maybe it wouldn’t be true and she would be back in the room when I came back the next evening. She had to be there, she was coming home soon.9

The nurse had told me mum wasn’t going to get better. She had said that she had picked up some sort of infection in the hospital and they couldn’t cure it because it had been spotted too late on. She told me that mum would be able to come home soon though. I took this to mean that she was always going to be ill, that the infection was incurable but not fatal. That she would be okay, to some degree. As soon as she told me, I went to her room and saw her, lying there on her bed. I hadn’t noticed how sick she was before. Her face was now hollow, not the kind and reassuring face of the mother I cared about so much. Her wrists, so thin they seemed as if the slightest tap could snap them. I remembered all the times I hugged her, how it made me safe, remembered that nobody could hurt me when mum had her arms round me. Now, the sight of her scared me. I hated seeing her like this; I didn’t want her suffering like this. As she lay asleep in the bed, looking smaller and more vulnerable than I had ever seen her, I was scared both of her and for her. I didn’t realise, at that moment, the truth. I guess in my heart of hearts I knew what the nurse meant, but I would never allow myself to believe it. I wanted so much to have my life back the way it was, the happy family, the closeness, the unity and the things we did together. I even missed mum embarrassing me when we were out. 10

I knew I should have been by my mother’s side when it happened, I knew I should have been there to comfort her, to say goodbye, not “see you soon” as I had done the last time I saw her. 11

I turned and ran from the hospital, I didn’t know where I was running, I just knew I had to keep going. I don’t know what happened in the hours after I ran, but when I got home it was obvious dad knew. I ran and clung to him, crying.12

The tears poured down his cheeks too, he looked like a much older man now than the one who I had been looking after while mum was ill. Drained and hurt by the reality of life. Life is just the short time between birth and death. To give my mum more time, I would have given her anything, my heart, lungs, anything. I would have jumped in front of a bullet for her, given up everything for her, and sacrificed my happiness for her. But I never got the chance. If I could turn back time, I would have asked the doctors to take my organs to replace hers. Without my mum, my life was worthless, without her, life wasn’t worth living. The world was a worse place. If I was dead and she was alive, the world would be dramatically improved. But she was gone. And nothing I could do would bring her back. Only I didn’t see it that way.13

I went back to school two days later. People didn’t know so they asked why I was off. Somebody asked how mum was, after I knew someone had told them what happened. One boy told me I was only upset about her dying to get the attention. Another said it was no big deal. A few people did give me a kind word, but not many. It only took a short time for others to get back to normal. But for me, things weren’t back to normal for a very long time. Dad got miserable again. I couldn’t cope much longer with school and home. I tried to stop it myself. But in the end, I just accepted it. I didn’t manage to get to school as much as I would have liked, dad needed me more than I needed exam results. I did as much work as I could. But I knew I couldn’t get any good marks in my exams. The days became a blur. I never knew which day of the week it was; I didn’t know whether it was morning, noon or night. I sometimes stayed awake for 36 hours then slept for 5 or so and then went to school for a day. I had lost everything. My mum, my chance at good exam results, the family I once had, my friends and I had as good as lost my dad. I broke down in tears at random points in the day. I didn’t see the point in living. My world had been taken from me, so what was the point in trying to hold onto it? I didn’t want to live anymore, nor did I want to die. I just wanted to see my mum. 14

Some nights, after a particularly difficult day, I would get very upset and become convinced that mum wasn’t really dead. That she was just hiding. She was in an obscure country and all I had to do was find her. I became obsessed, following strange rules and rituals, convinced she would come back to me. If I broke a rule, I was punished, if I kept to them, mum would come back, even if it was just so I could say goodbye. The rules became harder and harder to follow. I felt numb most of the time, like I wasn’t really living anymore, just existing. I didn’t know that I could miss anybody as much as I missed her. I didn’t think that degree of pain was possible. The world went from somewhere beautiful and safe to somewhere I hated, it repulsed me and I was terrified. 15

A few weeks after we buried my mum, my whole world fell apart around me. I couldn’t cope. School was too much work and home was becoming the most unbearable place in the world. I didn’t mean for things to happen the way they did, the first time, being an accident, was, in all honesty, scary. But soon I became reliant on it. I had lasted all those months caring for my mother without finding a release, but when she died, I couldn’t cope. I needed something to stop the pain and make me feel alive again. 16

It took me many months to realise that I hadn’t really lost everything, I still had my memories. I still had all my mother had taught me. That knowledge didn’t stop me missing her, but it made it hurt a lot less. I made a photo album of all the photos with her in, and I hid it under my pillow. Every time I missed her, rather than following the rules, rather than beating myself up for getting upset, I remembered all the happy times we spent together. I looked at the photos and cried over her passing, but over time, I did this less. 17

My dad grew to accept his loss, he got better and I wasn’t left totally alone to look after a house. I started going to school every day again, and eventually got my exam results. I knew mum would be proud of me but I longed to be able to tell her, to open the envelope and show her how well I did. I knew she would be watching over me and so on exam result day, I took my envelope, still unopened, to her grave to open. I cleaned the flowers up and laid some new ones, yellow tulips, one of her favourite flowers. With shaking hands, I opened it and burst into tears. 18

“You always said I would pass. You always said I would do okay, that I was smart enough to do anything I wanted. Thank you mum, you taught me everything you could. Without you, I wouldn’t have passed. I’m sorry I didn’t thank you enough. You really were the greatest and I love you.”19

It may sound silly, but I’m sure that as I sat by her grave, crying with joy and sadness, I saw the shape of my mother in the nearby trees. I wanted so much to follow her, but knew that I had to move on, that although losing her was sad, life had to continue, and I couldn’t spend it all in the past. I had a future. And she would always be part of it, even if I wasn’t thinking of her every second of every day. 20