Not So Bad

Chapter 7 - A Drunken, high blur

The Isle of Wight.

How do I even begin to tell you about how I began to rebel?

And my college days, god, I don't think I ever want to be involved in a break up ever again.

But first came the school days. I'll tell you about them first, even though they were less frustrating than collage and kind of a big blur from how I got drunk all the time at parties and smoked whatever and...

Yeah....you get the picture.

So anyway, Nan introduced the three of us to an average sized flat above the local kebab shop in the middle of a town called Newport, I remember looking up at the placed with raised eyebrows, holding little Jasmine to my chest with one arm and the opposite hand holding onto Seb's.

"I don't like it" Seb said, stuffing his pudgy little thumb into his mouth. "Stop playing around Nanny, I want to go home"

Nan looked at me with worried eyes, I smiled reassuringly at her and crouch down in front of Seb.

"We don't want to go back to that nasty house do we?" I smiled, now eye level with him. He stares at me with his big blue eyes and shrugs his shoulders. "This is our home now" I concluded, pulling him along up the black metal steps at the side of the shop.

"How do you do that?!" Nan asked incredibly, staring at me with a mixture of shock and awe. I handed Jaz over to her and she smiled wide.

"Well after everything that happened, Seb and I have a...certain trust"

I unlock the door to be greeted with peeling walls, cracked ceilings, carpets coming up at the edges, bulbs that flicker when turned on and a strange...musky smell.

"Well this will be lovely with a little paint job"

Seb and I exchanged looks with worried expressions and then back at the walls.

***

Over a few months I was known as 'the new kid' in school, I started to hang around with what was the worst kids in school because they took me under my wing all because I had a black eye, they knew I was seeing a councillor, so they suggested some methods to help me stop stressing. So I began to smoke, whenever things got too much in my head, I smoked out of my bedroom window. I tried weed but didn't really see the big deal, all sorts of drugs but really hey just sort of made me feel really sick. I was invited to parties and met new people that didn't go to my school. I was out really late sometimes and I even bought myself a leather jacket to complete my look for my 16th birthday.

Mum still wasn't home yet though and as I said it had nearly been a whole year and despite all the drinking and smoking I was doing and all the partying that somehow took all the pain away, I was studying for my exams because I just wanted to make Mum proud.

How I managed to fit it all in I don't know. I didn't want to be the person I was, I used to be so different, these kids were bad news and I knew it, but it was distracting me from all the thoughts I had of Dad that my councillor was trying to talk me through, all the bad dreams and waking up in a cold sweat every night. And it was sort of fun breaking rules, my headmaster hated me but didn't suspend me because he had me classified as 'troubled'. I liked having attention from all the girls, I liked this...bad boy image.

Wow how stereotypical I know. But they all loved it and I couldn't really imagine life or myself to be any different, even if it all happened so quickly, I was used to it now.

I knew Nan was worried about me, but I was convinced I was getting better. I wasn't really, I was numbing everything and I wasn't spending any time with Seb or Jaz and Jaz was growing up fast.

I arrived home from school one day, stubbing my cigarette out and spraying myself in cologne to disguise the smell before unlocking the door and chewing on a stick of gum.

I could hear muffled talking in the living room. So I yelled out a hello and Seb came rushing with a grin on his face.

"Hi Matt!"

"Hey champ, why do you look so excited?" I smiled.

"Come see!"

He dragged me into the recently decorated living room, all furniture bought by my Nan. I smiled down at him and then looked up and my mouth dropped.

"Mum" I instantly had tears in my eyes as she stared lovingly at me and smiled.

"Hi Matt"

"How are you?!"

"I'm very well thank you, as good as new, how are you? You look very different"

"I'm grand now!"

I almost leapt across the room and wrapped my arms round her tight as she began to cry into my shoulder, my Nan rubbed my back as I began to shake slightly.

"Everything's going to be okay now Matt, I promise you, I won't let anything like that happen again"

"It wasn't your fault Mum. And don't worry about anything okay because I am going to protect you, all of us, I promise you too okay?"

"Thank you Matt, that means a lot to me"

And that's where things began to look up for us as a family. Finally.